Skirting board

[lurker]

The house refurb continues.

How do you pros fix skirting board?
Screw and plugs and calk the holes ?

Other thing:
I saw somewhere on this forum a recommendation for internal door hinge placement but can't remember where.

I plan to be buying 9 new doors and was going to make a router jig to cut out the majority of the hinge recess plus a story stick for locations.
I plan to use 3 hinges per door

 

[Adam9453]

It depends on how flat and sound your walls are.
If nice, flat and sound then try using "no nails" or "sticks like ****" adhesive and just stick them to the walls, you can also put in the odd screw of masonry nail to pull it into the wall if you need to.
If your walls are pretty uneven then I wouldn't bother with glue, just go straight for screws and plugs (assuming masonry walls).
Another alternative, if all your walls are masonry, you could buy a masonry air nail gun (axminster sell them quite cheaply), this is very quick and cheap if you already have a compressor.
I find screws are generally best to pull the board into the wall if you have a bit of a gap.
Regarding filling, I use 2 part exterior wood filler from Wickes. It's epoxy based and sets rock hard in 30mins. This is assuming your using mdf skirting boards.
If using solid wood and not painting then you would need an appropriate colour match wood filler, before finishing.
Best piece of advice though is to prep the boards as much as possible before fitting. Much easier to sand and undercoat before fitting.
Once all your boards are fitted (but before painting top coats), run a bead of caulk along all edges that join walls etc, wipe any excess off straight away with a clean wet finger (disposeable gloves are your friend here).
Good luck

 

[Adam9453]

Regarding the hinge fitting, 3 per door is usual.
Position top one 6 inches down from top.
Bottom one 9 inches up from bottom.
Middle one equidistant between the top and bottom hinge.
I'd recommend you buy the trend jig (currently on offer from d&m tools), fit all your doors, then sell the jig on.
If you do, I may even buy it off you as I have 11 doors to fit in my house soon!!

 

[Zeddedhed]

+1 for trend hinge jig. I've got the two part skeleton version and it's da BOSS!!

 

[Roughcut]

For skirting: 7mm masonry drill bit, drill through skirting and into wall.
Tap screw and raw plug all the way into the hole, then tighten up screw with drill/driver.
Use a general purpose ready mixed squeezy tube filler or mix up some easy fill for screw holes, any slight gaps at the top between skirting board and wall get caulked.
*Mitres for external corners, scribes for internal.

 

[lurker]

Adam wil note you hinge positioning carefully thanks
I think I was on the right track from the sound of it
Walls are no where near flat so rough cuts method is what I had planned

I could buy a jig but where is the fun in that?

 

[blackrodd]

You don't say if you Are you using the dreaded "dual skirting", favoured by the merchants, or MRMDF?
MDF, Apart from it's poisonous dust is more stable, and economical, bearing in mind it's ready primed,4 sides
and very little waste, in 5m lengths I remember, and well worth it's cost.
When fixing any Mdf,on the ground floor, keep 3mm off the floor itself, especially if any DPC condition is unknown.
Gripfil and the like are useful but can easily "let go". Both surfaces must obviously be sound, so any fresh or flaky plaster, paintwork, old or new must be sound.
when applying the adhesive, (to the skirting) as its quick curing it will form a skin sometimes before it goes against the wall, therefore wiggle or move the skirting board enough to break the bead of adhesive before it is fully against the wall, experiment on a couple of short ends.
This poor adhesion happens a lot more than you would think.
I like the drill and plug method helped with some gripfill on any favourable, solid background.
Belt and braces, always better in the long run, and saves embarrassment later as quick jobs aren't always better.

ROUTER JIGS! Set the router fence for depth in the door edge, cutter depth for the hinge flap thickness, and a scrap piece of timber in a square "U" for the 3" of router travel for the hinge length, hinge set at 9" up, 6" down the door and just a pair if not solid doors, pair and a half if they are
Regards Rodders

Spoil yerself and get one of these!
http://www.rutlands.co.uk/sp+woodworkin ... oC0Jrw_wcB

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If you can choose your boards, pick them with the heart on the outside - they will (usually) cup away from the heart, so the edges will stay close to the wall.

 

[No skills]

There's lots of ways to fix skirting, but there's also lots of different wall conditions you have to work with too.

If you have level floors and masonry walls with plaster right down to the floor and the skirting is to be painted then life's easy, drill/plug/screw and fill to your hearts content.

If your job is any different then post up the conditions and one of us will try and help.

And no my last bit of skirting fitting was no where near that easy.

:lol:

 

[No skills]

If you can choose your boards, pick them with the heart on the outside - they will (usually) cup away from the heart, so the edges will stay close to the wall.

Amen!

I had to kerf cut all along the backs of the skirting I fitted to the hallway to try and flatten them.

 

[lurker]

Thanks for more advice
Black rod hell will freeze over before I buy anything from rutlands again!

 

[Eric The Viking]

How big are these skirtings? This below applies to the Victorian-style stuff I have to wrestle with round 'ere (11" ground floor, 9" first and 7" top):

I always screw and plug (or fill at the top) - easy to find if it ever needs to come off again.

This time round (9"), I'm experimenting:

The old skirtings have to go back, but obviously the old wooden wedges can't be used, and the finish plaster doesn't go down to the floor. So I'm removing the black plaster back to the brick in a few places behind each skirting, and fixing tall pads of thick ply to the wall with screws+plugs and bedded with No More Nails (to even out the rough brickwork). The pads should come out at the level of the skim coat or slightly thinner. It'll then be easy to fit packers to the back of the skirtings if needed, and no mucking about with finding a rawlplug 'target" through the skirting (wasted hours doing that in the past!).

It'll take a bit longer initially but it should be a lot easier.

Painting:

Prime both front & back of the board, and the ends, to minimise the chance of cupping and splitting. I've done this in two old places with good results, but you can never tell if it's the method used or just luck. If stripping old boards, beware: they move about too!

Apply knotting both sides, for similar reasons - it locks the knot in place fairly well and if it's already shrunk, you have a firm base for filler. I like aluminium primer for skirtings - it's expensive but really good, and pine resin doesn't get through it easily (if you missed a bit with the knotting).
. . .
I can't report back on how it goes for a while (fixings, I mean) as three out of four boards in the room will wait for the wardrobe plinths, and the last one is scribed to one of the others, so although I'm priming them next week they probably won't be actually fitted back before late November.

 

[lurker]

It's a 1885 terrace
We wer planing to strip and reuse the skirting but when I removed some it was all dry rot behind the many layers of paint.

My preference is for a similar profile mrmdf but it's not my shout

 

[No skills]

Ah more information!

Eric is familiar with my moaning about the shoddily built and terribly maintained 1890 terraced house we live in

The last skirting I did was our upstairs hallway, replacing the "modern" skirting - which was just 6x1 par with some okish 9" timber skirting. I had similar work to Eric in the plaster doesn't go to the floor and is an inch or more thick and varys in thickness along the wall. I had to get timber packers fixed to the wall and then fix skirting to that, as well as adding extra fixings to help straighten the very cupped skirting.

A mare of a job (despite being less than 6m of skirting used) but I have learnt a lot along the way. One thing I learned too late is the use of concrete screws instead of plastic plugs. The bricks in my house have a fairly hard face but are soft as **** in the middle, if I tighten up a rawlplug type fitting too hard the brick crumbles and the fitting is useless. Out of sheer frustration I drove a large turbogold screw straight through the wood into the brick and it gave me a better fixing than all manner of plug sizes and types I had tried. I investigated concrete/masonry screws after that and have been using those where possible since.

Hth

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My friend (a sparks) bought a house the same age as mine -1890s. He walked in the pub one night and said you know what? If one more person says to me they knew how to build properly in those days, I swear I'll lamp them. :lol:

 

[Eric The Viking]

We have a new town on the north of Bristol, Bradley Stoke, known as "Sadly Broke" after the crash of the early 1990s, leaving many owners in negative equity.

About five years before that, a garden wall fell down. No biggie, but it was a new garden wall, of a new house.

It turned out that the brickies had used a 12:1 mix, to save a bit on 'expensive' cement. But it wasn't only the garden wall where they'd done that, and that wasn't the only property, either. People were scraping mortar out of their brick walls with fingernails. I'm not sure if the litigation is all finished yet.

Why mention that? Well, anyone who's been down here might have heard of the suburb of Redland: big-ish 4-6 bed Victorian houses, many terraces, etc. I was told by a local historian that during the 1870s there were more completions per week in Redland than in Bradley Stoke in the 1980s. We had a flat in Redland for a while - it's not hard to imagine.

@Lurker: It's most likely wet rot, not dry rot, which is a good thing, but either way you need to treat it or any natural timber going in to replace damaged stuff. Given these are skirtings, I'd lift the floorboard nearest the wall, and have a good sniff, and a poke around the joist ends with a screwdriver.

Now's the time to replace the ends of any joists if necessary. It's actually a pretty easy job on the ground floor, and not impossible higher up the building (but disruptive). Support the joist with a car jack underneath; cut the end off and soak the remaining end in preservative.

I like to coat the top of the sleeper* wall (sometimes just a step in the outer wall) that the joist end bears on, with Synthaprufe, and put plastic DPC under the new end. Bolt old and new bits of joist together with three M10 or M12 bolts, plate washers to the outside and star washers between old and new.

If you can't match the timber thickness (height) work to the floor line, and pack underneath with offcuts of slate until level. Make sure your new joist ends don't touch the walls and that the gap isn't bridged by rubble or plaster dabs. Check the floorboard ends on the two adjoining walls at the same time.

If it really is dry rot (and it's hard to tell which if it's old, got well established and has dried out since), get specialists in, as the whole floor really needs doing and the spores will be in the plaster, too.

It's unlikely to have just happened without a reason. See if any source of damp is obvious and fix it. Dry rot is so named because of the appearance of affected wood, not the conditions it grows in -- both wet and dry rot need dampness to flourish.

For upper floors it's awkward as you have to support them, and there is the ceiling and bearer for the joist to consider.

I've done a room with a cellar under, but there was a ledge caused by the cellar wall, so, with the exception of supporting the floor with Acrow props, the fix was pretty similar to a ground floor. For a normal first floor, I'd get professional help - I believe you can 'splint' the end of the joist but there is a high risk of having to patch the ceiling below, because you'll be messing with the lath immediately underneath the joists.

It sounds horrible, but honestly, doing ground floor joist ends is quick and easy, and satisfying, as once the floorboards go back down, it's immediately obvious that the floor is strong again.

E.

*"sleeper" is the correct term for the low walls in the middle of the room supporting the joists of a ground floor floor. I have a sneaky feeling there is another name for the same thing round the perimeter of the room. Happy to be corrected either way. Commonly there's just a foundation that's a half brick wider inside than the wall brickwork, and the joists sit on the ledge created.

 

[No skills]

:lol: :lol:

A pet peeve of mine, "buy an old house, their better made and cheaper.."

No proper foundations. Single skin walls. No dpc. Wet rot. Dry rot. Wood worm. Lead. Asbestos. Settlement. Bugger all insulation. Recovered roofs with concrete instead of slate. Dodgy wiring and a hundred or more years of dodgy repairs.

Cheaper? Not when you have to spend all your money fixing that lot.

**** old houses that's what I say, **** them all.



Sorry for the derail..

 

[lurker]

My home for the past 30 years was built in1938.
The place were we are working (my sons house) is infinitely sounder than my place and that' itself is quite decent IMHO.

Underneath the rubbish put in in the last 50 years is a good solid structure.
We had set aside 20k but I think we wil get it all done for just over 10

The brickwork is superb although I have a big tub of lime mortar to repoint the back where some ***** had rendered the wall and breached the damp course.

 

[lurker]

Eric you may be right about the rot. I'm pretty convinced it's old and no longer an issue as we have removed the cause of the damp.

I have most of the floor boards up as I'm fixing a 5 year old wiring bodge and everything looks sound.
A bit of ancient woodworm here and there but am removing any unsound wood as I go along

No skills ta for the tip about masonry screws I'll investigate, a mate was saying how good they are.

 

[lsx]

How big are these skirtings? This below applies to the Victorian-style stuff I have to wrestle with round 'ere (11" ground floor, 9" first and 7" top):

I always screw and plug (or fill at the top) - easy to find if it ever needs to come off again.

This time round (9"), I'm experimenting:

The old skirtings have to go back, but obviously the old wooden wedges can't be used, and the finish plaster doesn't go down to the floor. So I'm removing the black plaster back to the brick in a few places behind each skirting, and fixing tall pads of thick ply to the wall with screws+plugs and bedded with No More Nails (to even out the rough brickwork). The pads should come out at the level of the skim coat or slightly thinner. It'll then be easy to fit packers to the back of the skirtings if needed, and no mucking about with finding a rawlplug 'target" through the skirting (wasted hours doing that in the past!).

It'll take a bit longer initially but it should be a lot easier.

I can't report back on how it goes for a while (fixings, I mean) as three out of four boards in the room will wait for the wardrobe plinths, and the last one is scribed to one of the others, so although I'm priming them next week they probably won't be actually fitted back before late November.

I know this is resurrecting an old thread (and I'm a new poster) but.... I really like the sound of your 'experimental' way of fixing old skirtings and am contemplating testing it out on some 7" victorian skirting.

Did you get round to doing this? How did it work out?

I'm interested to know what thickness of ply you used. The backing plaster here is only 10mm, so am thinking I'll have to cut into the brick at least another 10mm and go with 18mm ply for a good anchor.