You use a knife and cut the shoe loose were it meets the base, then carefully pull off. Install floor, then install shoe. Fill holes, caulk show to base, and then paint.

If you mess the base up, pull it and replace it.

Yep.Use a sharp utility knife to cut the joint and then a small trim bar to remove the shoe.

Shoe Moulding is cheap. you can find stuff for around $.50 per lineal foot. If it really does have multiple coats of paint, just replace it. But as others said, cut the joint so you don't peel paint off the base, and just remove.

Thanks for the advice, ya'll. Perhaps this will help. This is how it looks now. The house is old and previous owner did not care for it at all. What I thought was a beautiful patina turned out to be (hope you're not eating...) deep grooves filled with years of dog poo. I scrubbed it on hands and knees for a couple of weeks.

I tried polyeurethaning the floor, and it looked great for a couple of years, but three years on is now peeling up in sheets. My fault. I tried leveling those grooves with gobs of poly. I don't mind. All I have in it is dozens of hours of labor and three or four gallons of the poly. We're just trying to get it cosmetically fixed up to put it on the market and get out of the landlord business.

The floor is so damaged that there's no way it could be sanded again because of the deep grooves, but I think the poly is in there well enough that at least it's level enough to lay down either vinyl or laminate planks. I'm just worried about how to butt it up to the walls, since I'm not sure it even IS possible to slice and dice and get the shoe mold off, though. The paint is rock hard.

or carpet, if that is a better fix.

either requires removing the shoe. Seriously, take the knife and score where the shoe meets the base. Use small trim bar under shoe, then after the joint breaks, in the joint. Pull shoe, throw it away or save it, whatever works.

Or cut the joint at the base and wall and remove the baseboard and shoe at the same time.

If you are going to refinish the baseboard, you could just use paint remover to get all those old layers off. Just rub with steel wool. Won't work if you want to keep the old finishes of wall and base.

We paid $18,000 for this house, and have already put many many hundred hours of sweat equity in it. The last thing I want to do is start stripping and refinishing a couple of hundred feet of baseboards, lol. And if my experience with the doors is anything to go by, there is no paint stripper in the world that is up to whatever this beauty has been painted with over the years. I tried everything I could find, from assorted chemicals to heat to intense manual labor, and probably lost a buncha brain cells in the process! Can't take the baseboards off, either. There is some kind of phone wire (?) that was laid right over top of it, and painted over so many times that it has become "part" of the baseboard. And the walls are plaster anyway, so if we go trying to rip off or strip baseboards, we may do irreparable harm. At some point, you have to sit back and say, "cheap house, stop now while you're ahead" and reluctantly go for a cheap and "easy" fix.

I do sincerely appreciate the responses.

Before writing off the feasibility of refinishing the old floor, consult with a couple of professional floor refinishers. You might be surprised, though you also may not want to invest that kind of money. Compare the cost of paying a finisher with the cost of installing something new and that the shoemold doesn't have to be removed.

The shoemold really shouldn't be that hard to remove. You can try scoring the paint, as has been suggested. First I would take a wide sharp chisel held vertically on the baseboard and tap it down where the shoe meets the base. I wouldn't recommend trying to remove the base. If you have plastered walls, the amount of damage you could inflict could be substantial.

You paid $18,000 for the house? And you're worried about some shoe molding? C'mon.....

unless you live in a complete ghetto riddled with crime, if you put 10g's into the house, which can be really simple and easy things, you could potentially make a killing on the return, granted if there are no major structural issues.

It's not $50 of replacement shoe moulding that's the issue. I'm worried if I attempt to pull out the shoe molding, which is stuck like iron to the floor and baseboards, I will tear up the floor, baseboards, possibly the walls, and do thousands of dollars damage. Because the house is so old, the current, worn flooring is attached directly to the joists. There is no underlay. You can look up and see the flooring if you are in the crawl space underneath. I do NOT want to rip out the entire floors and replace.

All I was looking for was some suggestions about how to lay a new floor over top, and butt it up against the existing moulding.

I am in over my head with this floor, and will have a couple of people out later this week to have a look at it.

I ran a business on the same street for 32 years, and thought it was worth investing in the neighborhood. The adjacent military base was closed, and there were big plans to turn it into a research park/housing/shopping area. This house would have been adjacent to the proposed park, lake, and outdoor amphitheater, and we bought it with an eye towards moving into it ourselves when that happened. Years of studies and community bickering, and now it's all but abandoned, the beautiful base golf course overgrown, weeds growing in the middle of streets, and all those buildings left to rot. The largest building in our city is in that complex, completed a year or two before the base closure, sitting empty. What an utter waste.

It is a low income neighborhood, but it has slid precipitously after the redevelopment plans came unglued. Drug dealers on either side, frequent shootings, a murder, and a really spectacular SWAT incident in the past year. We've already put $70k+ into it, and will be lucky to get half that back out of it. But, what kind of person would I be to walk away and let it fall back apart and do further harm to the neighborhood? I have friends and former customers living on the street. There are good folks amongst the catastrophic ones that have moved in.

Honestly the if you make the joint cuts on the moulding and go slow, you wont cause any more damage. I've taken off thousands and thousands of feet of shoe from new homes, to homes like you just described. it can be done! Do not try to lay the laminate without pulling the shoe.

as far as "abandoning" the neighborhood. whats more important? safety or happiness? By you leaving the neighborhood is not going to do any more harm or good if you were to stay. It sounds like your town needs a MAJOR overhaul, and its sad and unfortunate but its not something you alone can do.

If you feel like that overhaul is in the process of happening, then I would say stick around and wait for the home prices to rebound, if you don't see the overhaul happening soon, just get out while you can!

There is no molding you can use to cover the gap between a floating floor and existing shoe molding.

Shoe molding is what is used to cover the gap.

Pull the shoe, install the floor, install shoe.
OR
Refinish the existing floors

The right tools are a 5 dollar utility knife, a 5 dollar trim bar, and some finesse. Seriously, you could have pulled up the majority of the molding in the time spent on this questions.

I suggest you use a box cutter to slice the paint where the show meets the baseboard. Then band a chisel between the too and separate a little the show from the baseboard. Your flooring is old and will take the abuse. Then once you have a gap started get a crow bar and place a piece of wood about 4" tall by 24" wide across the baseboard. Something like a 2"x4" or the like. The 2"x4" will keep the crowbar from scratching your baseboards and disperse the force in one location.

Your show holding will be nailed in place and will fail will force. After the new floor goes in over some foam or cork the new shoe will cover the cut since it will be higher.

This is one of the simplest DIY jobs that anyone can do. I'm amazed that there are so many posts giving essentially the same advice---that isn't being taken! LOL!

I pulled off shoe molding from a room in my 100 year old house a couple months ago that looked exactly like yours. It took all of 5 minutes to remove it all with a hammer and a wonder bar. It had so many repainted layers that had chipped and been repainted that it looked like crap. I tossed it and bought new shoe molding so it would be smooth.

Yep, I agree with all the others. This is not a big deal.

Paint the floor and leave the shoe and floor problems to someone who cares about old houses.

"All I was looking for was some suggestions about how to lay a new floor over top, and butt it up against the existing moulding.
"

You can do that, but it's far harder than slicing the paint that is acting like glue and removing the shoe molding and then installing new molding. It would involve scribing the flooring and trimming it exactly to make it butt cleanly.

Shoe molding is what covers up the gaps where flooring doesn't meet baseboards cleanly.

I've done this for several old houses, and have never done irreparable damage to floors or baseboards.

"I've done this for several old houses, and have never done irreparable damage to floors or baseboards."

How do you know?

That "cheap shoe mold" could be the nearly extinct American Chestnut which matches the baseboard. If someone buys the house for restoration and strips the baseboard, he's unlikely to ever get matching shoe again.

Stewardship, people, please.

Joseph, I think you are preaching to the choir on a forum like this, so chill and give posters credit for knowing what they are dealing with. This is a 750SF house, built to house base support during the interwar period. It is as basic as basic gets, but hardwood flooring was par for the course in that era, even though a luxury to us. There is just no way to cosmetically salvage the floor. It has served faithfully for ninety years, but is just worn out.

I appreciate everyone's advice on the shoe mold. I'm clearly overthinking it, but I was just so down in the dumps because of all that haaaaard work scrubbing and laying poly gone to waste. I was so proud of the job I had done. But we knew it was a gamble when we did it, because of the condition of the floor.

We have found an unbelievable clearance deal on Trafficmaster laminate at the local big box, so we can at least keep the look of what was there.

I think you are over thinking it. If the house is old with lots of character and detail I would be disappointed to see a laminate put down and would just think the owner is trying to hide something. Instead I would throw down a very large jute rug and stage the house to highlight the other features.

What? And have someone lift rugs to see sheets of poly the size of saucers lifting up?

I don't know why folks think just because a house is old and has wooden floors, it is full of character. That's just a false assumption.

The only character in that house right now is the one who goes down and paints it every afternoon. Me!

This is a funny thread. I personally have this same look of shoe moulding and feel super ready to tackle the project of ripping it out, Unless Sophie's 90 something year old mother wants to do it for me?

My sisters house had the same moulding and it was awful to get out. The nails holding it in were about 4" long and it broke off in pieces. We used a utility knife and had to keep changing blades but cut through the paint and on the floor then pried it off. It didn't damage the baseboard at all aside from a little chipped paint, which we filled with white wood putty and sanded. We laid down laminate and put back new quarter round.

This room she ripped out all the old woodwork. :(

This is the before floor

You can use the following steps to Install Laminate if Shoe Mould is Painted on?
Step 1:Remove the carpeting.
Step 2: Lay out the foam underlay-Cut and lay out foam underlay, usually found where the laminate flooring is purchased.
Step 3: Starting at one end of the room begin laying the laminate.
Step 4: Use the Laminate cutter.
Step 5: Important note-Stagger the cuts by Laminate cutter.
Step 6: Once finished nail in the baseboards and enjoy your handiwork.

Hope it will help you.