Floor molding question

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marielapagina

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:help:
Disclaimer: I know nearly nothing about home repair but am dying to learn and will do the work to ask questions and research. So please be kind...

My situation is that I bought a 1979 split-level house. The upstairs has fake wood floors. It used to have floor molding, but we pulled that out. We want to replace it with new molding. But it looks like what happened is that the old molding was put in FIRST and then the floor was put in afterwards. So now that we've pulled out the molding, there's a gap between the flooring and the wall. Do I have to find the right depth molding to fill that gap in? Or a deeper molding and have it on top of the flooring?

Let me know if my description doesn't make sense at anytime. I'm not verbally skilled with home repairs.
 
My best guess is your talking about shoe or 1/4 round moulding. Shoe is 1/2 wide by 3/4" tall and 1/4 rd. is the same width and heigh, be it 1/2 X 1/2 or 3/4 X 3/4.
There's going to be nails at the very bottom of those old baseboards going into the bottom plate in the wall so it's not going to be just lifted out without doing what I suggest below.
What I've done is used what's called a Toe Kick saw in the vertical position and cut the old base board even with the old floor, and used an ossilating saw to cut into the inside corners. Then you cut along the paint line from the wall to the baseboard to break the bond and tap a wide putty knife in behind the base board, then use a flat bar over the putty knife, tap it in and only move the baseboard about a 1/2 away from the wall and work your way down the wall.
Now you will have room to pull it out or better yet use a sawsall to cut off the nails.
If your old baseboard is only 1/2 thick then just replace it with new baseboard and add new 1/4 or shoe moulding.
If it's 3/4" thick then just buy clear pine boards, sand then prime 2 coats and paint before installing and add cap moulding to the tops of the baseboards to give it a finished look.
It's always best to prime and paint any trim before it goes up so you do not have to paint close to the floor or wall. Just fill and touch up paint the nail holes when done.
 
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Joe: I think they already have it out. The gap between the floor and the wall is there for a reason, your new molding just goes to floor level and as Joe said it may take 2 moldings to cover.
 
Can you please send a picture so we do not have to guess at what you have.
 
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