Beading between skirting and floor

I recently laid a floating floor over an existing concrete floor - no problems there at all. The skirting boards had been removed, so I left the usual expansion gap all around the edges of the floor. Then new skirtings were stuck on with Gripfill, using temporary shims so the floor would be able to slide underneath if it needed to.

The problem is that the straight bottom edges of the skirting show where the new boarding has followed some very shallow waves in the original sub-floor. I very nearly got away without needing a scotia bead between the skirting and the floor... very nearly, but not quite.

This raises two questions:

  1. Where to buy small-section scotia beading in oak? The standard
20x20mm would look unnecessarily clunky. All it needs is 12-15mm maximum, and most of that is to allow for fixing to the skirting board.

Any suggestions, please?

(I should add that we're in a very rural area where there are no opportunities for casual browsing in the sheds and timber merchants. We can get to the big cities, of course, but we always need a specific target, and need to be sure that they'll have the stuff we want.)

  1. How to fix it?

Obviously the beading has to be fixed to the skirting board only, so the floor can still slide underneath. The best way I've been able to think of would be a combination of Gripfill and lost-head panel pins (probably pre-drilling the thin edge of the scotia to prevent splitting).

Reply to
Ian White
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Scotia always looks clunky to me because you're introducing two more flat surfaces, which makes it too "busy". Quadrant would probably be the least obtrusive, and this is usually beech IME, which might be a better match than tropical hardwoods.

I think I'd probably use contact adhesive. A thin bead along the back of the moulding. Push it in place, then take it away to let both surfaces dry. Any sort of fixing in small mouldings usually looks a mess unless you have an airgun that fires really small pins. Little chance of it sticking to the floor but you could put a sheet of paper under the moulding to be sure

Reply to
Stuart Noble

Thanks, Stuart. You're absolutely right - in a small size, quadrant will look better. We can paint it to blend with the skirting, so there won't be a problem about matching wood finishes.

And thanks again:

Should work fine. I can make a little gadget to knock the quadrant up against the skirting so it sticks at exactly the right height, with a guaranteed small gap underneath.

Job's as good as done. Most important, I can see what to get from the timber merchants on the next trip to the big city.

Reply to
Ian White

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