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I have the niche mostly cleared out--necessary if I want to build a vocal booth in there. There were 2 x 4s bolted to the back wall (my idea for a way to put shelves or whatever else on the wall wherever I wanted--which worked fine for quite some time, but I can't have shelves *and* a vocal booth back there, obviously.) I had a contractor handle that at the time because I didn't know how to do it, which made taking them off (I want that extra 3 1/2 inches for the vocal booth) kind of tricky.
When you want to fasten wood to cinderblock, you do it by drilling a hole through the wood into the cinderblock and inserting an anchor into the cinderblock. An anchor is something that starts out small (so you can get it in the hole) and expands to jam in there good and proper. Some anchors have a bolt as part of them; the bolt extends through the wood and the anchor expands as a nut is tightened on the bolt. Some anchors are lumps of lead with a threaded hole and expand as a lag bolt (a bolt with a sharpened end, like a screw) is tightened into the lead lump.
These ones were the bolt version, and I wasn't sure whether the wood wouldn't come off because of the friction where the bolts went through the wood, or whether the bolts fastened into the wood in some way, so I used my iPad to take a couple of pictures of the bolts, and went off to the hardware store to access the know-how of people who sell and use such things. I checked in two different stores (didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings but also aware that sometimes people make mistakes, so I wanted a second opinion) and the consensus was that it was friction holding the board on and the solution was a pry bar and patience.
And I have now gotten the two by fours off the back wall. Now I need to saw the bolts off; my angle grinder can use something called a "cut off disk" which sounds like it might be just the thing, since I don't have enough clearance to use a hacksaw very well back there. So that's the next step.
When you want to fasten wood to cinderblock, you do it by drilling a hole through the wood into the cinderblock and inserting an anchor into the cinderblock. An anchor is something that starts out small (so you can get it in the hole) and expands to jam in there good and proper. Some anchors have a bolt as part of them; the bolt extends through the wood and the anchor expands as a nut is tightened on the bolt. Some anchors are lumps of lead with a threaded hole and expand as a lag bolt (a bolt with a sharpened end, like a screw) is tightened into the lead lump.
These ones were the bolt version, and I wasn't sure whether the wood wouldn't come off because of the friction where the bolts went through the wood, or whether the bolts fastened into the wood in some way, so I used my iPad to take a couple of pictures of the bolts, and went off to the hardware store to access the know-how of people who sell and use such things. I checked in two different stores (didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings but also aware that sometimes people make mistakes, so I wanted a second opinion) and the consensus was that it was friction holding the board on and the solution was a pry bar and patience.
And I have now gotten the two by fours off the back wall. Now I need to saw the bolts off; my angle grinder can use something called a "cut off disk" which sounds like it might be just the thing, since I don't have enough clearance to use a hacksaw very well back there. So that's the next step.
