Fit Skirting Boards With Ease in Older Style Houses
Fitting skirting board nowadays is a whole lot easier to the difficulties faced many years ago when the design of houses was a little different to that of today.
One of the difficulties usually faced is that the finish on the wall usually stops about 6 or 7 inches from the floorboard. This was done on purpose as it would stop any bridging of the DPC in place thus stopping damp from working its way up the wall. Fitting the skirting board would cover the exposed brickwork showing at the bottom of the wall.
Easier said than done though! Even though you can attach fixings into the top of the skirting board, due of the gap at the bottom of the wall between the plaster end and floorboard, it’s hard to get a fixing point without the bottom of the skirting board ‘moving in’. To solve this problem, many of the older builders from years back would chop out of timber, what is know as twisted plugs. These are essentially timber plugs that would be cut from say three by one inch timber and then hammered into the wall into a mortar joint.
These plugs worked well and in fact, are still used today as a solution to fixing skirting boards in older houses. There is an alternative method though to save cutting the wedges and raking out mortar joints to insert them in. This is a tip that actually not a great deal of people are even aware of so I hope it will be of use to you when fitting skirting boards in older houses.
Drill and plug the wall near to the bottom, maybe every 2.5 feet or so, depending on the area of wall to be covered . Now put screws in deep enough so that you can screw them in or out to meet the bottom of the skirting board and subsequently stop the board from pushing in at the bottom. Adjust the screws or fixings as required.
As well as fixing your skirting boards at the top. You will also be able to get a good fixing near the bottom of the skirting boards without the board pushing in on you. I’ve also know people to have tried packing out the gap at the bottom of the wall with plasterboard etc, this I feel defeats the object as the plasterboard may be getting fitted below DPC level and prone to decay due to damp. In any case, the fixing method in the example above provides a more durable support for the skirting boards.
So next time you’re fitting skirting board to an older property, try this little trick out.
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Great info and advice there. Thank you for that! I was always using timber plugs but the screw trick makes things so much easier. I never would have thought of that.
Any advice on what to do when the wall has a bend in it? I just can’t get the skirting to lay flat and there is a big gap left between the top of the skirting board and wall.
Help!
Okay that piece of information is very useful, because I have just got my house and office renovated and this trick will come into play now. It will enhance the beauty and security for my arena.
What a great tip for improving the beauty of an older home. Using the screw trick makes this repair so much easier and faster, so now there’s no excuse in letting the project slide.
HI Ben. if you have a bend in the wall you can put saw kerfs on the back of the skirting board which will help the skirting board to take the contour of the wall. Hope this helps