The Historic District

MD1850Farmer, this is hugely helpful...I don't suppose you have any pictures of what your trims look like?

Sanders can't be used on tar paper because it immediately gums up the sander. It's sticky stuff. Sanding can only happen once most of the tar paper is off. This has been a crazy week of wallpaper and tar paper removal.

Also, Kelletim, I will try a heat gun and see if that works. I have access to an older one.

The members of this forum are great! Thank you much!

try to see if it will dissolve you can see if laquer thinner or paint striper will work on it.
it looks like a black mastic is it really paper?
I had a floor with stuff nothoing would dissolve. I used an iron, squirt bottle and putty knife. I'd put a pool of water then sit the iron on it and then when hot use the putty knife. it was not an easy job.

heres one other method you can try. use a router with a wire cup brush in it , you might make up a jig so you can adjust the cup brush to just touch the floor. It wil spin lke mad and throw the stuff all over but go faster. Keep in mind it might over rev the wire wheel and it'll loose bristles so you might get hit by them you need to protect yourself.

also be aware that stuff likely has asbesotos in it.

if it'll dissolve you might be able to buy a whole bunch of rags like towels from the thrift and dissolve, wipe and get the rags somewhere out of the house whee they aren't going to start a fire, like a metal can with water in it.

jut aim to get enough off so it won't clog the paper and then sand the floor.

look in closets etc to see what your baseboards should look like typically a 8" high board with a 1/2 x 3/4 quarter round. Ha! now try to buy full dimension 1 inch finished wood.. hard to find. Use 3/4 but buy the boards an inch or so wider, use the strips you cut off and put 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch strips on the backside of the board where it meets the wall. now it will look like it is an inch thick and that will save lots on the wood costs. Mine are all vertical grain knot free fir. It is expensive stuff. If you want to paint them ( I hope not) but if you do just use cheap wood like pine or oak or whatever you can get your hands on it won't really matter.

put the board on the floor against a wall and trace with a pen laying the pen flat on the floor and pushing it along that will mark a line with the contour of the floor they usually aren't quite flat. Just get it to fit within 1/4" or so and the 1/4 round will hide the gap.
remember your corners need to fit for height so don't go crazy with the trimming until you get them all roughed out and see how they sit on the floor. the 1/4 round will follow any waviness in the floor.

don't miter the corners, they should be butt joints. each corner can be one of two ways, use the one that looks best to try to hide the spot where the boards meet as you come into the room. as the wood shrinks it won't open up like miters would. It temting to think they should be mitered but I think if you look at most original ones you'll find that isn't right. You can miter the 1/4 round though.

if you want nice wood for the trim think of the final cost, if you let the wood show you will want the same species for the door and window casings. white is the cheapest, but real wood looks nicer.

watch out and think ahead about how your roundovers will meet. You don't really want a roundover up against the end of a board such as you would if you just run the roundover all the way through every board. this is a minor detail but just be aware how the roundovers will work when it is put together.

You could choose to stop the roundover of the baseboard an inch before the corner. then just round it over where you want it rounded over. Youll see what I mean when you really examine it.

when you sand you want all the baseboards out of there.

looks like your floors are oak so I guess you are looking for oak for the baseboards?
second the detail of the plinth blocks Mine are 1/14 thick so they are pround of the casings and baseboards by 1/4" also the casing above the window is thicker than the one on either side of the door so that is proud of the casings by 1/4 as well. If it weren't, then the roundover would look funny where the it meets the top of the casing that is beside the door. where board above the door meets the two side casings.
the board above the door is also heavier than the casings and about 7" in my house and each of those has "ears" they are cut at an angle not square. try to find out how yours were cut or look to houses in your area of similar age. some houses also have a strip of wood above the upper casing about 1/4 x 1 1/2 or so, sometimes it has a fancy shape. sometimes trim also has medalions , those square blocks with typically a round indentation or something similar. If you have a molding shop they will be able to elp you ID what you should have in your house. even if it is just one room you are doing realize you may want to follow suit throughout your house so its better to research than regret

Oh no, I hadn't realized it might have asbestos. I believe the new floors were put down in the 80s...that means likely not? I will talk to my flooring contractor about it!

http://www.mesothelioma.com/asbestos-ex ... ts/mastic/
maybe it is maybe it isn't. It isn't friable but I'd test it before you do the thing I suggested with the router and wire brush. if you use the iron method well it isn't really friable so I'd be a bit less scared but maybe a test would identify your risk.

another option might be really coarse paper and yea it'll plug but maybe if you just get the bulk of it off and then consider a few plugged sheets of 16 or 32 grit? then go finer when you get into sanding the floor. I guess you could have a sample tested?
try water on it too see if it will dissolve in water or lacquer thinners or paint stripper or alcohol that might help ID the binder. is it mastic or tar paper? any actual paper there?

I think I will test it. It seems to have an actual layer of paper in it. I think it's from the late 70s or 80s and probably means no asbestos, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Sigh, I knew there might be asbestos in old popcorn ceilings, but I didn't know about this adhesive...I'm glad I asked you guys about it.

Thank you so much for all this information!

Oaktree, I used 1x8 poplar plus quarter round for baseboards in my bathroom, to replace some pine that had been installed in the 80s. It matches the original baseboards in my upstairs really well, and it takes paint well. It doesn't have the rough-grained, knotty appearance that the pine did under paint. 5/4 lumber would definitely be nicer, but the 1x8 might do what you need if your budget is smaller.

Thank you, superbeetle!

phil wrote:don't miter the corners, they should be butt joints. each corner can be one of two ways, use the one that looks best to try to hide the spot where the boards meet as you come into the room. as the wood shrinks it won't open up like miters would. It temting to think they should be mitered but I think if you look at most original ones you'll find that isn't right. You can miter the 1/4 round though.

Seriously? Even mitered joints that have gapped look better than butt joints in the base board. I can't imagine.

I would add that our kitchen floor had the same black gunk after removing layers of old flooring. I went out and got an old steamer but when I tried to scrap after heating it would dig into the wood given the steam made it soft As others pointed out, sanding is tough given it gums on the paper. However, in my view, since we were sanding already, I preferred paying for the extra sanding paper versus the extra time it would have taken to get it up another way. May not have been the smart way but it worked ok.