Removing Dado Rail from wall

B

burger1979

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Hi,


I have a dado rail on my living room wall but I want to remove it so I can paint the room one colour (it has magnolia on top and red on the bottom of the rail). Whats the best way to remove it from the wall? it is nailed in so i was just thinking of getting a claw hammer and taking it off that way carfully enough without trying to do too much damage to the plaster. has anyone got any other suggestions?

thanks in advance

burger1979
 
I'd go that way, except that it is better to use two hammers. Try to line up the claw hammer with a nail (if you can find it) and hit the face of the hammer with the other hammer; that works it in very efficiently.

You can't avoid doing some damage to the wall, especially when removing nails.
 
There are a few ways of doing this. This one worked for me, leaving me with only nail-holes to fill.

  • Before you start, gently insert a flexible metal putty-knife / filler spreader behind the dado and work it along the length of the rail breaking any paint that has glued the dado to the wall. This will also help locate nails. Mark nail locations on the rail as you move along. Do this top and bottom of the dado.
  • Hold or tape (masking tape) a strip of ply-wood against the wall above the dado.
  • Tap a nail-bar behind the dado above a nail so that the angle on the nail-bar makes it stick out from the wall.
  • Press the nail-bar away from you towards the wall, levering against the strip of ply-wood
  • When all the dado is off, gently sand the the raised edges of paint left on the wall and fill the nail-holes and channel left where the dado was.
 
cheers for the replies folks. will try a combination of both on a small section and see how i get on.
 
What I've done with this before is to screw a screw into the dado rail (thickest part) and use the claw hammer on this so as to pull the dado rail away from the wall without damaging the wall. Same concept works for skirting boards too.

After removal though you will need to use some filler to match the paint depth that exists above and below the where the rail has been removed, otherwise you'll have a mismatch in the levels when you apply a single coat of paint to the entire wall.
 
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