About Them Baseboards

Did a little exploratory surgery on my baseboards today.

Took off the quarterround shoe on one short piece, expecting to see the new fake wood flooring installed all the way up to the face of the original baseboard. This would make the base difficult to remove for taking down the basement to refinish.

No, there's a 3/8" to 1/2" gap between the finish floor and the baseboard.

This is good.

So I proceeded to take the faceplate off the electric outlet installed in the baseboard, to see if I could just pry the base off the wall and pull it off around the outlet box.

Whoever notched these outlet boxes in was a real craftsman. He (I assume it was a he) cut all round the box and fit it in really tight.

This is good, in re: the crafts- manship.

But not so good, regarding my easily removing the base trim. The actual recepticle screw flanges extend past the cutout for the outlet box. It'll take some twisting and contorting and maybe disconnecting the wires before the recepticle will be out of the way of the woodwork. That means figuring out which circuit controls the dining room recepticles and getting them shut off before I go pulling the baseboard away.

This is not good.

Though maybe it is. I really ought to know what circuit these are on. And I need to replace the ivory-colored recepticles with brown ones, anyway.

And in the end, it may not be feasible to refinish these baseboards down cellar. Two of them measure twelve foot long or so, and I don't see getting them down the basement steps without major damage to walls and paint.

So maybe I'll strip them in place after all.

Once the wallpaper is all removed, that is. No way I'm using the heat gun anywhere close to the wallpaper. Do not want to test what my insurance agent says, about my house being covered for full replacement value.