How to Tear Out Subfloor When You’re Weak

Rating (decode with the handy-dandy guide here)

• Time 
• Money 
• Tools 
• Experience  
• Strength 
• Risk 
• Suckage  

Continuing on from yesterdays “How to Demo a Fireplace“,  today I will explain how I got my subfloor out. In order to raise my floor up to be level with the rest of the house, I needed to tear out the existing subfloor so I could start fresh, instead of frankensteining braces on top of questionable flooring. The full vision for my project is here. While having brawn certainly makes demolition a lot easier, it isn’t necessary! The trick is to use your leverage to your advantage.

Step 1: Understand the basic physics

I know, I know. You’re getting flashbacks of high school physics, but really, understanding this will make it so much easier. If you want to know more about it, there are plenty of explanations online, just google “How do levers work?”. The important thing to remember here is that you are the chick, and whatever you’re trying pry up is the elephant. The blue triangle is called a fulcrum, and its what you’ll leverage against. If you orient your prybar like that, so that there is a greater distance between you and the fulcrum than whatever you’re picking up and the fulcrum, you’ll have a lot more leverage than trying to muscle through it on your own. The longer the prybar you have, the more leverage it gives you.

Step 2: Seat your prybar

My floor had three levels, so it was pretty easy to find a good starting point. I start with the trim prybar, since it has a flat edge that is easy to get between the two pieces of wood I am prying apart. I lined the trim pry bar against where the subfloor was nailed to the beam underneath it and tapped the back of it with my hammer. In this sketch, tap the back of the prybar with your hammer where the pink arrow is pointing until you get the flat piece of the prybar between the two pieces of wood.

Step 3: Get separation between your two pieces of wood

Depending on how tightly your boards are held together, you might be able to get by with just the trim prybar. I could not, as the trim bar started to flex (there were a TON of huge nails in the pieces I was removing). What I did was I got a little space by using the trim prybar, and then hooked my wrecking bar in the space and using the 3′ of leverage to pry the wood apart.

To make clean up easier, and safer, I pulled the nails out as I went. If your sheet of subfloor comes off in one piece like this, without having to pull the nails out as you go, be sure to flip it over with a spacer behind it (I used scrap 2x4s) so you can tap the nails out. You can hit the sharp side of the nail with your hammer until there’s enough of the head side sticking out the other side for you to pull off with your hammer or your prybar. For a small project, chuck these spent nails in a can or jar. For my size I used a 5 gallon bucket. You just need somewhere to contain them that isn’t your foot!

Note: Anytime you start opening up floors and walls you risk exposure to critter nests. I found this rat/mouse nest when I started pulling up my subfloor. Make sure you protect yourself. I do my demolition with a face mask or respirator, on top of my standard safety gear. I also wear longsleeves and pants.

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