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Replacing carpet with wood - remove baseboards? Or add shoe?

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

I have had several quotes from local flooring companies to rip out 500 sf of carpet and replace it with engineered wood. All different price ranges of materials. Clearly one company is pricier, but they have a excellent reputation to go along with that price. ( The others are no slouches, I would not bother with a quote from anyone that I was not comfortable with as far as reviews).

But it one thing they all have included in their estimates is adding shoe molding - nothing about removing baseboards. I actually had not thought about it until I was reading up on the installation requirements for one product and that was stated. So I did a little googling and it seems like this is done often. Should I ask for the companies to requote with that included? Does it matter in the finished floor? What is the norm in other’s experiences?

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Comments (3)

PRO
Koeber's Interiors: Flooring, Furniture, Windows
6 years ago
Base shoe can be a personal preference. However, if the new floor will be a lower height than the existing, when you remove and reset baseboards you will need to touch up paint along baseboards. There are also some instances where removing and resetting your base will result in damage of your base such as the base being old or brittle, if it was not installed great, if it is MDF rather than real wood can be difficult, etc.

If none of these are a concern, your choice may be more design related. Many people like the finished look with the shoe molding. Shoe molding should also be less costly as removing and resetting base is time consuming and your installer must be careful and organized.

Here's a recent install we did with base shoe:

Here's when we removed and reset baseboards:

Hope this helps! Good luck on your project.
Chessie thanked Koeber's Interiors: Flooring, Furniture, Windows
PRO
G & S Floor Service
6 years ago
If, it is a click-lock installation adding a shoe base is more economical. Makes it easy to remove for future repairs. For regular T&G installation, undercutting the bases with a super saw is fast and more economical. The baseboards do not affect any repair process.
Chessie thanked G & S Floor Service
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Chessie
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
This will be a traditional T&G, nail-down floor. No one has mentioned undercutting either - I guess they just don't quote for things like that unless you ask. The existing baseboards are a knotty pine, pretty solid I think, but they have never been removed as this carpet is original to the house. But now that I think about it, it probably would not make sense to remove them due to the following.

The 2 rooms (dining and living) that are getting wood floors, are adjoining but have a wide transitional doorway. I have redone the dining room as part of an overall kitchen/dining update. I left floors for last because I was so uncertain as to what I wanted. You can see in this picture where all the trim in the dining room is now painted. I am very pleased with how it looks now (I was SO over the knotty pine trim in there - crown, chair rail, and baseboard - it was overwhelming). Choosing a wood floor has been difficult because I really do not want more brown/orange tones on the floor. So whatever I wind up with, it most certainly will not match the existing baseboard color in the living room Of course, it will be fine in the dining room since those are now painted. I had honestly not even thought about the trim color in the other room until I started bringing home samples. I laid them down on the floor and had an "oh crap" moment. :-/ But after doing some research, it looks like that really isn’t that much of an issue? I was pondering whether I should embark on yet another major painting project now, before I get wood floors in there. And to rip off those nice freshly painted and caulked baseboards in the dining room would be hard to swallow, given all the work I did.

With adding shoe mold, then a decision definitely needs to be made. Either stain to match baseboard, or paint both, white. Lord this is such a pain....it’s almost tempting to just get new carpet!!

The pic below shows my oh crap moment - one of several LOL.

This is NOT the wood I will be getting - I've not made a decision yet but whatever I get will probably have more gray/neutral colors than this. This is a Kahrs sample, which I thought was not bad but it is floating/gluedown only.

Thoughts??

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