I took up the wall to wall carpeting in my home, previously my parents’ home, as I prefer the lovely hardwood floors underneath. I’m getting ready to paint the living room now and have a question re the baseboards. Over the years painting was of course done down to the level of the carpet, leaving more old coats of paint on the baseboard above the carpet line. I’m trying to prep and am using a scraper but of course it’s impossible to position the scraper upwards towards the multi-levels of old paint since it’s only about an inch above the floor. Scraping sideways is only partially successful and sanding doesn’t seem to do anything, although am just using a manual sanding tool. I really want to do a good job on this room and don’t want to be able to see an uneven surface through the paint. Any ideas? I’m a do-it-yourself beginner by the way.
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Sanding may do it but you will use a lot of sanding materials and it will take a long time. If the paint line is low enough you could put a cove molding at the floor level. Want to really dress it up since you are refinishing the floors back to natural wood, replace the molding with new wood or have the existing ones stripped and refinish.
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This is definitely a job for a multi-tool- the oscillating saw. You can get one at Harbor Freight, on sale, right now, for $35. You may want to use the scraper blade, or, the 1½ inch saw blade. Maybe, the half moon blade.
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We just took our carpeting out and want to keep our wood floors . The baseboards are like yours many coats of paint. We have a paint scraper and we scraped all the baseboards in a bedroom. Worked real well but it took a long time . So with the rest of the rooms I’m going to get some paint stripper gel and remove the paint.
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Sanding, a real paint scraper not a razor blade or putty knife, a heat gun or paint stripper, any of them should are a combination. I prefer the heat gun over paint stripper. A paint scraper and then final sanding should give good results. If it is to hard to reach with it on the wall. Carefully pry it off. Then you can strip it down at a convenient working height. Also for sanding paint look in the automotive section and start with a low grit like 60 or 80 and work up. The automotive sanding paper does not seem to get clogged with pain as quick as regular sandpaper.
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I’m repainting some wood trim as well and rather than doing the very time consuming and difficult task of stripping paint I am just using drywall mud to fill the gaps where the paint has chipped off. Just like filling in holes in drywall. Much faster and a lot less trouble than stripping paint. Just fill, sand, touch up with primer and then paint.