Trick of the Trade: Low-Profile Wood Floor Scraper From Paint Sticks

Chris Bauer at Sacramento, Calif.-based Bauer Hardwood Flooring was hand-scraping a job when he ran up against a fireplace with a brick overbite his usual scrapers were too big to fit beneath.

Not one to back down from a challenge, Bauer, notorious for his job-site MacGyverisms and Dollar Store tricks of the trade, began a quick inventory of things he could use to fashion a low-profile scraper for the hard-to-reach section of the floor, and his eyes settled on a couple of new Home Depot paint sticks.

Using a Ryobi cordless drill, he drilled three holes in the two paint stirrers and bolted and blue-taped them together.

“I drilled a third hole in case I needed more stability and strength holding the two paint sticks together, but the blue tape wraps and one screw was enough,” Bauer says.

For the actual scraper Bauer screwed on a Red Devil single-edge 1-inch-wide scraper blade.

“To scrape flush alongside vertical surfaces I tapered the sides of the paint stick where the blade connects using a cordless Ryobi orbital sander using 80-grit,” he adds.

From idea to completion, the contraption took only about 20 minutes to create. And the best part? “It’s working!”