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Backsplash Be Gone
Bought our home in early 70's and need to
remove harvest gold laminated backsplash with 3/4" backboard. We
removed one small 18x24" piece with a crowbar and pulled off some
backing, too.
Is this the only way to remove the larger
2 pieces? Our kitchen in L-shaped with both pieces about 8' in length and
18" tall placed between the base cabinets and the top ones.
Unfortunately,
you may be in for a struggle with your laminated kitchen backsplash. I
could be wrong, but I have seen several custom-made counters and such
that were an absolute pain to remove. What some carpenters do is screw
plywood to the tops of cabinets and the wall, and glue thin laminate
over that. Thus, the screws are hidden, but can not be reached later
because removing just the laminate is very difficult. In some cases the
screws can be cut with a reciprocating saw and a long metal cutting
blade. You can try peeling back the laminate, maybe squirting in some
solvent (I'll bet Goof Off will dissolve that glue), but this approach
will be slow and tedious.
If you simply pry on the backsplash with a prybar, you will almost
certainly punch a hole in the drywall. You might have some success by
using a rigid support board to pry against, so the forces are
distributed across the wall onto a couple of studs.
Another trick is to make a series of horizontal cuts in the backsplash
with a circular saw. Use a carbide toothed blade (you are going to hit
screws and nails) and set the blade to exactly the same thickness as the
backsplash (or a tiny bit less). You can do the "divide and
conquer" approach. Make one cut in the middle, then check for
looseness with a pry bar. If no luck then make more cuts, dividing each
segment into progressively smaller strips until they come loose.
However, this will make a mess. You must wear eye protection, chips of
laminate are very sharp. At some point all you will have is sawdust and
small chunks of backsplash, but with that approach you WILL win. And you
should avoid destroying the drywall.
If the backing wood is glued to the drywall, you will tear the surface
paper, it's unavoidable. Zinsser
makes a water-based primer called GARDZ that is supposed to seal torn
drywall paper. You also might be able to use a good quality oil-based
primer to hold the torn paper edges in place.
Bruce W. Maki, Editor.
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