To remove the skirts or not..?

[jon-]

Quick question. Going to lay some laminate in a small bedroom to use as an office over the winter, while I sort out the extension.

The skirts are old and tatty, but the laminate will probably only be in there a year.

I can't work out whether just to butt up against them and lay edging, or get them off and go buy some new skirting board from wicks.

As I've written this, I've realised it probably won't add too much time to get them off and replace new ones. I presume I can hammer them off, and nail / glue the new ones..?

I should do some research.

[Fort Jefferson]

Take them off.

[Turn7]

Looks utter shyte with a crappy scotia or quad bead added on afterwards.

Do it right and have the skirts off.

[sjj84]

As said, take them off. Looks st otherwise, we have the beading in our dining room inherited from the previous owner, looks st.

[greygoose]

If it is just for a year then I wouldn't bother and would replace the skirting boards when you go back to whatever is currently there and take out the laminate.

[530dTPhil]

Just be prepared for ripping chunks of plaster off with the old skirting boards if they are attached with long nails!

[Grandad Gaz]

I would say it would depend on the age of the house.

Ours is almost 100 years old and it made a right mess when we replaced the skirting.

The walls are lime plastered, so some of that came off with the skirting boards. To make things worse, before rawlplugs came on the market, they used to use timber wedges between the brick joints and fix the skirting to these with big cut clasp nails about 4" long!

btw, if you don't know what a cut clasp nail is, they are square and not round like normal nails

Edit: just seen Phils' post above!

[jon-]

Thanks guys. I'll try and take one that will be hidden by the desk today, and if it starts making a mess I'll just leave them on otherwise they'll be coming off!

If a jobs worth messing up, it's worth messing up properly.

[SimesJH]

As above.

It could get horribly messy, plus you'll need smooth plaster behind the skirting if you're intending glueing them in place.

By the way, if you do take them off, I've found it better to buy MDF skirting as it's generally flatter and therefore much easier to glue to the wall.

[Pheo]

If the whole lot is going later anyway I wouldn't bother. As above, I had to use a bolster to remove ours and it made bloody great marks in the concrete render. Which then the plasterer made good. But you're not doing that, so I'd leave it for now.

[paulrockliffe]

I wouldn't bother removing the skirting for a temporary job, though I think I'd just leave the carpet alone anyway if you're just using it in the short term.

My house is over 100 years old, wedges and big nails behind the skirting, it didn't make all that much mess removing the skirting and I wasn't overly careful as I was replastering anyway. Mine wasn't plstered to the floor and wedges were left proud of the wall to accomodate the resulting cavity.

If you do fit skirting, I fitted mine by drilling and then hammering in lengths of dowel before hammering nails into these. If you glue them you won't get them as tight to the wall as a nail will, which is important if your walls aren't straight as the nails will pull the board to the contours of the wall.

[monthefish]

Take them off. Doesn't add much time to the whole job and gives a much better finish.
Your cuts don't have to be so accurate as the finished edge will be covered when the skirting is replaced.
If the skirtings take off a bit of plaster, it doesn't matter as it will be covered when the skirting is replaced. If not, buy deeper profile skirting to replace it. (If still not, you've made a right balls up of it )

Don't forget a bit of expansion gap to the wall. In theory, if you aim for the middle of the thickness of the skirting (often 14mm), you've got +/- 7mm but you don't want to be using all of that. Laminate should be pretty stable in any case in terms of thermal contraction/expansion, but it's worth letting it condition in the room for a bit before fitting if possible.



p.s. If you must leave the skirting in place, the quarter section beading caulked in to the skirting board and then painted to match the skirting board doesn't look too bad, well, better than an attempt to find some the same shade as the floor, which never looks quite right.

[skilly1]

I was going to say the same. We put down temporary (2-3 years) laminate in out hallway. We did not take off skirting board but painted the cover strip white to match the skirting board rather than have a wood finish similar to the floor. Look much better - but not as good as doing properly.

[jon-]

As soon as lunch goes down I'm going upstairs with a hammer and wide blade screwdriver and making a huge mess of things

[paulrockliffe]

Have you broken the screwdriver yet?

[monthefish]

paulrockliffe said:

Have you broken the screwdriver yet?

...or pushed right through the plasterboard above trying to lever off the skirting board.

I've never done that myself. Not at all.

[B17NNS]

If you've got a spare section of laminate or a bit of scrap put that between your screwdriver and wall and pry against that.

[jon-]

No broken screwdriver (I found a chisel), but I might have broken my will

So, on the stud walls the skirts are nailed into runs of wood under which run under plaster which (not sure how normal this is, it's a 1980s house) using those lovely big square nails. Most of which are bent.

This has made getting the old skirts off fairly easy, and as they're quite short skirts I can safely buy higher ones to hide any plaster damage which I might or might not have made

Just got to do the backwall under the rad now. That'll be interesting.

[paulrockliffe]

monthefish said:

paulrockliffe said:

Have you broken the screwdriver yet?

...or pushed right through the plasterboard above trying to lever off the skirting board.

I've never done that myself. Not at all.

If you want to do it without trashing the walls, screw some handles or bolt eyes to the skirting, do them in opposing pairs. Then use a cable and some sort of whiching mechanism to pull them off the walls in pairs by pulling against each other.

[boyse7en]

monthefish said:

If the skirtings take off a bit of plaster, it doesn't matter as it will be covered when the skirting is replaced. If not, buy deeper profile skirting to replace it. (If still not, you've made a right balls up of it )

Depends on the age of the property. My 1930s place had very deep section skirting (about 9") and the skim coat of plaster was done down to the top of the skirting. When you removed it, the "undercoat" plaster onto the lathes was about 1/4in recessed.