Moving site

I am not sure how to deal with this issue.

I want to start from scratch on my wordpress site. I have had so many issues with plugins and images and such that I need to start some stuff from the ground up.

BUT, I dont want to lose current pages and Blog posts. However, I know If I use the importer, and I dont move it correctly later, I will lose my images in what is current. I learned that the hard way.

So how do I do this?

1) Create a new site in a subfolder.
2) Once I get everthing looking right, I want to import my Pages and my blog posts ONLY.
3) Reinstall plugins and get them all working the way I want
4) move everything back into the root directory with out losing the original database of images, pages and posts.