Solid Hardwood, Engineered and Laminate Flooring - The Right Tool for This Job?

Okay, here's the situation: I just bought an old house (built 1910) and am renovating it bit by bit. The second floor / attic area is finished space, but the floor has settled a bit over the decades. I want to pull up the 1" solid wood planking up there, level the subfloor a bit, and put down new flooring.

Now, on to the problem: The old wood flooring is in pretty decent shape. It just needs to be refinished a bit. I plan pull it up as carefully as I can and preserve as much as possible to be re-used in that room, or elsewhere in the house. The trouble is that they seem to have laid the floor first, THEN build the knee walls on the sides of the room on TOP of the floor. Which makes it impossible to pull up the flooring without knocking out the knee walls. Which simply put, isn't going to happen.

So, what I am looking for is a tool that will let me cut right up NEXT to the sill plate, straight down, through 1" thick planks (The flooring is pine I believe.) I have a circular saw of course, but that's not going to get close enough and into corners. I also have an angle grinder, and was thinking that some sort of wood cutting blade for THAT might work well for the straight runs, but that's questionable.

Currently I'm staring at oscillating multi tools. Fein seems to be the gold standard for these... But they might as well be MADE of gold for the price. There's a far cheaper Dremel multitool that has wood cutting blades, and that seems like it would work... On a small scale at least. But I'm not sure such a tool would be up to doing the perimeter of a 12x10 room. And if it IS up to it, I'm sure it will take forever to get done... Though if it WILL do the job, I'll likely be willing to take the time.

As they say, every job is an excuse to buy a new tool. I'm just not sure WHAT new tool this job needs! Do any of you more experienced DIYers have any advice? :)

Take a look at the Bosch trim saw. I use mine for many things and love it. What ever you use it is going to be a pain. Should go through pine with no problem.

Hmmmm. I'm afraid that a trim saw just isn't going to cut it (No pun intended!) It's really just a circular saw writ small... But with all the same problems. I want to get up to within a quarter inch of the floor plate of the knee wall, and there's no way a circular saw is going to get into there.. ditto with corners and such... :(

Someone once posted an off set adapter for a recip saw (Sawsall). It would do the job, but not as neatly and prob not w/o some damage to the underlying floor framing.

The Dremel would prob be ok for a small area, but from what I've seen in reviews..it's noisy, vibrates, and heats up a lot more than a Fein.

Tell ya what, you buy the Fein top of the line kit, use it for your job, then I'll buy it from you for 1/2 the orig price? LOL

Is it possible, dare I say this, to not use a power tool? What about one of those Japanese saws or a backsaw? I realize you have a lot of linear feet to do but if really want to get that close manual tools may be your only option.

Otherwise use the power trim saw and then the dremel when you get to the corners.

Robert, you need to do a search on Bosch trim saw, it is not a circular saw and it will cut flush with the wall.

michaelshortt> Ah I had done a basic search, and found a wide variety of 'trim saws' that were just circular saws. I jut did a more thorough search, and found what you were talking about. That is pretty much EXACTLY what I was looking for. It's a bit specialized, but it's specialized for the exact job I'll be doing! they have some factory reconditioned ones on Amazon, and since I won't be doing THAT much work with it, I think I'll save a few dollars and pick one of those up.

Thanks for the help! This will definitely save me HOURS of hard work! :D