Huge nails

Old-fashioned skirting boards are not easy to remove.  They are an inch thick and maybe five inches tall.  They aren't attached to the walls with poxy little nail gun nails, like in modern houses.  They are attached to the walls with industrial strength nails.

There are three sets of these humongous industrial strength nails every so often along the skirting board.  The nail heads are buried somewhere in the wood, and the part you see here is embedded firmly in plugs of wood wedged even firmlier into the brick walls.

A man in a video on the internet said only a pickaxe would give me enough leverage to pull them off.  The man in Homebase said a bigger crowbar would give me enough leverage to pull them off.  I went with the bigger crowbar, along with some bigger chisels.

The bigger chisels and the bigger crowbar worked a treat.  I love crowbars.