Wooden Floors

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A99

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Hi,

Our wooden floor was put down without removing the skirting boards & then a profile was laid to fill the gap between the floor & existing skirting board. Does anyone have anytips for where the floor meets the door architrave / frame, the architrave is moulded so there is a small gap that neeeds to be filled. I have seen this before in other peoples houses, does anyone know if there is a filler I should use, or can anyone recomend any tips, it is only a small area & the colour of the floor is pine / natural.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I know next time its easier to remove skirting / architraves etc etc .....
 
I'm not sure if this is applicable to your situation, but in my case I put down laminate flooring. To cover the gap between the flooring and the door saddle, I added in a bit of T-moulding (as shown ) which I cut wider than the door opening. I cut the T-moulding to follow the profile of the door frame so that it covered the gap between to the frame too.
 
Oh, and just as a warning, I tried to remove the skirting boards before putting down the new laminate flooring. The skirting board started to come away alright, but it was bringing chunks of the plasterboard with it (the walls did not have a coat of finishing plaster). I decided that it was easier, and probably neater, to live with quadrant covering the gap between skirting board and floor rather than have to carry out significant repairs to the walls afterwards. The same problems might not arise with walls that are plastered (our house, in certain respects, appears to have been thrown together in a hurry by builders who won't ever appear on my Christmas card list!)
 
i am giggling here at your pain - i made my man take up the skirting in the house we bought (26 years old and was painted a few colour in that time) and put down carpet and new skirting. The plaster came away from the stud walls moreso than the outter walls but frightened the BJ out of him when it happened. The bottom of the walls were in bits!.
So we repaired it (at current rate of spending should have shares in B&Q next year)and put down higher skirting so repaired parts don't show and it looks like no drama ever went on. My job was to varnish them.
 
Hi, Thanks for reply,

Where the floors meets a straight ie a wall or door saddle its no problem I done the same as you & used a profile or quandrant but what about where the floor meets a Ogee Architrave (curved shape) ?
 
The only place where my flooring met a curved shape was at the doorway, so the T-moulding that I put down was able to both cover the gap to the door saddle and also cover the gap to the door architrave, just by leaving it long enough to reach to the edge of the architrave on each side and cutting the architrave profile out of it. This worked because the existing door saddle was only slightly "indented" relative to the architrave, but if the distance between edge of door saddle and facing end of architrave had been greater, my T-moulding might not have been wide enough to cover the gap from the flooring to the architrave and still reach the door saddle. (Not sure if I am explaining that well - oh for a picture!).

If all else fails, the last resort is to get a block of wood and cut out the shape you need from that. If the floor is pine, then you could buy a small piece of pine from somewhere like B&Q, Homebase, etc., and cut it to shape with a coping saw (if your skills with a coping saw are not up to cutting the wood accurately, sandpaper makes short work of most soft pines).

As regards actually filling the gap, I'll leave it to someone knowledgeable about wooden flooring to answer whether that is a good thing to do. I would have thought that you might be creating headaches for yourself later, if the flooring expands/contracts, but whether it'll have a noticeable impact at that point of the floor depends on a few things, including the orientation of the wood grain (wood will expand/contract more across the grain than along it's length).
 
nelly said:
i am giggling here at your pain - i made my man take up the skirting in the house we bought (26 years old and was painted a few colour in that time) and put down carpet and new skirting. The plaster came away from the stud walls moreso than the outter walls but frightened the BJ out of him when it happened. The bottom of the walls were in bits!.
So we repaired it (at current rate of spending should have shares in B&Q next year)and put down higher skirting so repaired parts don't show and it looks like no drama ever went on. My job was to varnish them.
Click to expand...

I drew the line when the outer layer of paper started to peel away from my plasterboard walls when removing the skirting boards. Having had to scrape wallpaper off walls which had bare plasterboard underneath, and stipling off ceilings which had bare plasterboard underneath, I had gone into patience debt from repairing damaged plasterboard. Next time I check every wall for signs of un-plastered plasterboard before I buy a house!
 
Hi A99,

I'm not quite sure what exactly you need to fill the gap but we found when we fit laminate in the bedrooms that these people http://www.richardburbidge.co.uk are great for extras to tidy off. We bought small covers for around the radiator pipes which made the job a lot neater. They have stands in Woodies etc. You may be able to find something useful there.
 
This is obviously too late to be of use to A99, but I saw mention on another forum of an Arbortech blade that can be fitted to an angle grinder, which is designed to be used to cut the base of skirting boards in situ, to leave room for sliding new flooring underneath. Being able to fit flooring without removing the skirting would eliminate quite a few problems.

It does leave the issue of how you fit the last board, mind you, but if it meant only having to remove short segments of skirting board(s), or at worst one entire length of it, it could still make life a lot easier. It is certainly an option that I'll bear in mind if I am ever laying more laminate in the future.
 
askew70 said:
This is obviously too late to be of use to A99, but I saw mention on another forum of an Arbortech blade that can be fitted to an angle grinder, which is designed to be used to cut the base of skirting boards in situ, to leave room for sliding new flooring underneath. Being able to fit flooring without removing the skirting would eliminate quite a few problems.

It does leave the issue of how you fit the last board, mind you, but if it meant only having to remove short segments of skirting board(s), or at worst one entire length of it, it could still make life a lot easier. It is certainly an option that I'll bear in mind if I am ever laying more laminate in the future.
Click to expand...
Interesting, but how do you cut the edge of the skirting neatly insitu. I thought those arbortech blades were designed for rough carving and shaping of wood. I just don't know if a freehand, rough edge is really going to pass muster?
 
For anyone who wants to remove skirting without damaging the plasterboard here's my technique and it has yet to fail - Use a thin nail punch to punch any nails through the skirting cleanly (you should be able to find the impressions even if painted over) - you can fill in these holes later for re-use before painting.

Get a good quality decorators palette knife (8" long blade) and use it to cut the seal between the No Nails glue and the plasterboard. you will probably need to tap it down with a hammer but if you get a good quality one with a sharp blade it will cut it cleanly. Then just ease out the skirting - presto - your skirting and walls are intact and ready for after your flooring is laid.
Also I never use No Nails to put them back on - just find all the studs before you put skirting back and you can nail them back - can't understand why original fitters don't do this anyway.

for architrave you should be able to cut the base of them in situ with a good tenon saw and slip the flooring under.

cheers.
nai
 
Carpenter said:
Interesting, but how do you cut the edge of the skirting neatly insitu. I thought those arbortech blades were designed for rough carving and shaping of wood. I just don't know if a freehand, rough edge is really going to pass muster?
Click to expand...

Good question. I honestly don't know. There is a picture of the blade [broken link removed] but that isn't particularly enlightening either. I had thought that maybe you fit something to the centre of the blade that bears against the ground (or some smooth temporary surface) as you cut the skirting, to give something like a straight edge, but that could be problematic too.

I have seen a biscuit jointer being suggested for the same purpose, but it might be even more difficult to maintain a straight line with that, not to mention the need to get your depth settings correct if you value your blade.
 
nai said:
For anyone who wants to remove skirting without damaging the plasterboard here's my technique and it has yet to fail - Use a thin nail punch to punch any nails through the skirting cleanly (you should be able to find the impressions even if painted over) - you can fill in these holes later for re-use before painting.
Click to expand...

I like that idea for sorting out the issue of the nails. I'm not sure that it would have worked in my case though, unfortunately, as the nails in the bits of skirting board that I swung from were large ones (4 inches long in some cases, and thick too) that looked like they were driven in by a gorilla who used his fists ("bent" doesn't begin to describe the state of some of them!).

Incidentally, do you dislike No More Nails, or equivalent, because it doesn't perform well, or is it just personal preference?
 
I like the idea of using a biscuit/ plate jointer, you could run this along a batten to cut the timber. I'm sure if you set the depth at say 17mm to cut a 19mm skirting you could avoid damaging the blade. Once you started ripping out the trimmed edge it should come away easily enough, maybe??? When it comes to panel adhesive (dap/ no more nails etc) I would always use this where I couldn't get a nail in. Its very handy for fixing window boards and the like- timber can shrink and a nail or screw can lose its grip in the material but the adhesive will stop a board from working loose. It's also useful for fitting small pieces of skirting where a skirting might split if nailed. I think adhesives are being used more and more in place of traditional nail/ screw fixings for example in the case of fittings stair nosings etc.
 
Alot of very interesting discussion going on here but can anyone offer any help / advice in regard to the original question ?
 
A99: what about using a wood filler and shape it to the design of the door surround. We used it to fill in some pine skirting board. they are available in DIY shops and come in different colours.
 
OK A99, get a cartridge of silicone type filler. I've seen tubes of this specially marketed at timber floor installers- it comes in different wood colour shades, light oak to mahogany. If you cant get this product use RITO butyl sealant, its easy to use and clean up and is available in dark brown.
 
Soudal make a purpose-made flexible gap filler and its really fantastic-
comes in 6 different colours too-
I could post you one as I'm down the country and not sure who stocks it -
I get it as a special order,..............
 
try using a solid wax filler.a takes a while to push it in to thw gap but can be buffed aferwards to give the same colour and shine as the floor
 
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