Sometimes You Gotta Wait

Last night (meaning some time in the wee hours of this morning), I got the four pieces of dining room baseboard I removed yesterday stripped. Three shorts and one long. That makes, I believe, 48 pieces done in all, out of the 330 I tallied last January (not counting doors, floors, and stairs).

Doing them, I couldn't help but notice the charming pry bar marks I've left in the top edges. Couldn't help making them; that's what it took to get the trim off the walls; but oh, lord! What a joke it is on oneself to lambaste the clumsiness or outright butchery of previous owners, and realize that klutziness like this will rise up someday to accuse you, too!

And this afternoon I had enough to accuse previous owners of, and myself as well. This mid-afternoon, all virtue-bedecked, I set out to pry off the first of the twelve foot long baseboards in the dining room. I knew there'd be somewhat of a challenge, since yesterday I discovered that when the POs-1 (I think) resurfaced the east dining room wall with sheetrock, they'd notched it over the baseboard trim on the south and north walls. But with a modicum of work, the short piece on the south wall came free.

I anticipated the same event on the north.

Wrong!!

For one thing, between the original builder's great scribing job and the humidity of summer, the piece is wedged tight at its west (left) end. Oh, and it's also cracked there. For another, its east, righthand end, appears to run into the wall, oh, at least an inch, inch-and-a-half. For aught I can tell, it goes half-way round the world and terminates in some mystical kingdom of ancient plaster dust and horsehair.

So now it was I justifying wanton house butchery, and delicacy be damned. I chistled out big hunks of sheetrock. I pried out pieces of furring strip. I yanked out a couple of drywall nails. Good grief, by now it should only be plaster that thing's abutting now, but it feels like it's hung up on a piece of wood!

Of course I know the baseboard's hung up on the stupid fake Pergo at the toe. That's no mystery.

The mystery is now I'm finally going to get this piece off.

I've taken my hacksaw and cut through the nails towards the top of the board. There's maybe three more, about 3/4" from the bottom, where I can't get the hacksaw to them. And I'm not strong enough to take the wire cutters to them. By dint of the prybar ("SCREEEEE!! SCREEEE!! SCREEEE!!" till my ears where ringing) I've got the piece at maybe a 60 degree angle, plenty of room left to go where I got rid of the drywall and furring, but still stopped cold by something.

So around 3:30, I stopped cold, too. And had some ice cream. I shall have to borrow a bigger pry bar, or someone stronger than I to wield it, or both. And since my near neighbors all seem to be having parties or to be out this evening, that will have to wait.