Hi all,
We're about to have light-coloured carpets laid upstairs, but have been advised first to fill in the gap between floor boards and the bottom of the skirting. Otherwise, apparently, dust gets drawn in from the cavity walls and makes the edges of the carpet permanently dirty.
Can anyone please tell us if this is true... and, if so, what is the best (and easiest!) stuff / gunge to use ?
Many thanks for any advice.
Yup, seal the gap between the floor and skirting with silicone sealant. Ordinary decorators caulk will suffice
I used wide sellotape, but beforehand I painted the skirtings and included the outer inch of the floorboards, to provide a good surface for the tape to stick to. Sellotape comes up the skirting by about 10-15mm, which means it's invisible once the carpet is fitted. That was 21 years ago, and it's still fine. Sellotape long since lost it's sticky, but is still held to the floor with the grippers, and still prevents air coming under skirting gap and passing through carpet fibres, which is what would otherwise cause them to go black. Previous carpet was only down 3 years, but went black around the edge within that period.
This is a ground floor where there's a draft through from the subfloor. I would imagine the effect of a through-floor draft would be significantly less on first floor.
Last time I sealed a skirting I made a stiff paper mache from paper kitchen towel and some left-over wallpaper paste and forced that into the gap. A lot cheaper than using silicone sealer and seems to have been effective.
Mel.
Many thanks to everyone for the excellent advice.
We'll definitely fill in the gaps then... probably using a combination of silicone, tape and paper mache, since ease of access / condition of boards / size of the gaps all vary enormously...!
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