Question on skirting fitting on undulating wall

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Hello all, I've had a laminate floor put down in my study after stripping and repainting the walls (some plasterboard, some solid brick and plaster) and adding two surface sockets with cable trunking behind where the desks will be.

I've had some lovely sepele hardwood cut to match the other skirting in the house (mostly the original 1960s parquet). The skirting is about

40mm tall, a simple taper.

The floorers gave me the number of someone to fit the skirting (I'd make a mess of the mitres if I tried myself). But he has talked about gluing it rather than screwing/nailing.

What should I consider? I ask because:

I didn't realise until too late that one of the plasterboard walls has a massive undulation in the bottom 20cm or so over a distance of 50cm ish. Offering up the skirting requires quite a bend, as the gap is nearly 1cm at the worst.

I was considering trying to partially straighten out this bit of wall with a bit of filler but maybe it's to big an area and too deep. Is there a product best suited for slapping on top of an undulation without too much hackery?

Is gluing the skirting on such a curve going to result in it exerting such a force that it pulls the paint off the plaster? Should I ask this chippie to make sure it's fixed by other means?

Michael

[John Rumm]

If you try to bend skirting to an out of true wall, it looks awful, and also draws attention to the fact that the wall is not flat.

A batter approach is to fit the skirting to the high points, and then fill behind it. If the wall is painted, then paint over the filler in wall colour up to the edge of the skirting - it is then far less obvious that something is wrong because you see straight skirting, and a straight line of colour at the interface.

So if doing that, there will be no significant forces on the skirting since you are not trying to use the strength of the fixing to bend it.

[Andy Burns]

cope cut instead of mitres, if it's a typical room with all internal corners

[John Rumm]

Yup, for internal corners definitely, stops a gap opening up when the wood shrinks:

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Thank you John and Andy for the replies.

Here's a photo taken along the line of the wall:

The patio door is in shot (new sill planned). That near corner where straight edge is touching is protruding a little, compounding the problem of the indentation further along. Shaving down that corner a little could help reduce the extent of the filling needed. It's a plasterboard wall there.

You can see the sepele skirting on the floor there.

Just to be clear, you are suggesting that the skirting should be fitted

*first* (as close to straight as practicable) and that I then carefully build up the wall indentation above and behind it, masking off the skirting and floor to protect them, etc?

Would it therefore be best to strip off the paint from the area to be filled in, before the skirting is fitted?

Would regular polyfiller be adequate for such a large area? I did do a little bit of real plastering in the kitchen but I'm not really that good at it.

Michael

[nothanks]

That looks like quite a gentle and shallow curve - I'd be tempted to either skim the wall to get it flatter or to screw (and plug) the skirting to pull it in a little so that there's less to fill.

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Yes. It's reasonably gentle (there are various pits and scratches that I didn't repair so it does not look like an otherwise tidy wall, but I'm not overly fussed, I'm just concerned about the skirting).

I agree that I could probably get away with only a partial filling in to ease the curve a little so it's not obvious.

This wall is the only substantial length of skirting that will be visible once the desks and electric piano etc are back in place.

Can I get away with using something which isn't plaster? Or can I buy plaster in something /rather/ smaller than the usual 20kg bag?!

Michael

[GB]

Have a look at decorator's caulk?

[alan_m]

In my experience this stuff takes more water than you first think. Add the powder to the water and really mix well and allow it to sit for 5 minutes before mixing again, adding more water if required.

A 20kg bag of plaster is usually much cheaper than a lot of these fillers.

Skimming over paint with the above type filler.

[Michael Kilpatrick]

Thanks. I'm prepared to give that a go - I've watched the bubble video. I wasn't expecting anyone to suggest skimming on a painted surface, but I suppose it must be done quite often.

How long before it can be painted?

Michael

[Animal]

when it's dry.

You can use:

- bagged plaster. Heavy, cheaper

- 5 or 10kg tubs of ready mixed filler/plaster. Bit more money, bit less hassle

- tiddly retail filler packs. Waste of money.

- newspaper etc then caulk. Lss robust. I'd go for 1st or 2nd, perferably the 2nd.

[John Rumm]

Not above, just behind. Fill the gap between the skirting and the wall, and leave the wall above the skirting alone. Imagine your blue level is the skirting, and that shadow gap behind is filled and painted to match the wall. The line you will see is the high contrast between the top of the level and the wall - not the lower contrast cornet that is all painted to match. So if the wall meets straight skirting you see a straight line rather than a curvy one that highlights that the wall is not flat.

It also makes fitting the skirting easier. The filling is easy (just a gap you fill from the top)

So in my exaggeratedly bent wall, if you fit straight skirting to the high points, to see straight skirting with an ugly shadow line behind it:

The fill the gap and paint:

The visual impression is straight skirting and you don't notice the wall.

It is one of those visual tricks like when you have a white ceiling meet darker walls with no coving. If you paint right into the corner you see the error in the plaster where it meets the ceiling or where the ceiling droops along the line of the joists. However if you mask off level on the wall just a few mm lower than the actual corner and paint the ceiling very slightly down the wall, you get a nice clean line that hides the errors.

I would not bother... pipe in decorators caulk or use board fill plaster (the plaster is cheaper and won't shrink as much).

Its only a small area - you are not trying to skim the wall at all - only fill the gap behind the skirting.

[alan_m]

When its dry. You will be able to see when its dry. This stuff is fairly easy to sand but use a fine sand paper stuck to a large sanding block or large piece of flat wood. Fine sandpaper works best.

[fred]

[SteveW]

<SNIP>

On the other hand, if the OP does decide that they want to follow the wall, they could make a feature of the fixings.

Many years ago a friend and his wife fitted varnished skirtings. At the time they were wondering how to fix them to the existing wooden wedges, without the fixings showing. They eventually went with my suggestion not to try and hide them, but to screw the skirtings to the wedges with brass screws and cup-washers, both making a feature of the fixings and making the skirtings easily removable to run aerial and phone wires behind them in the future.

[nothanks]

The paint needs to be well adhered (obviously) so scrape off anything that is dodgy. Paint the wall with dilute PVA, let it dry then paint with dilute PVA again just before plastering. (I'm not a good plasterer but can get a reasonable result on small areas).

[Tricky Dicky]

Back in the day old time builders tended to apply the base coat plaster then fit skirting boards and then apply the finish coat this tended to fill any gaps behind the skirting. It is certainly the way it was done on our previous 1957 house which had 7” skirting attached with timber wedges so no chance of getting it to bend into the wall shape.

If you insist on making the plaster fill the gaps then use EasyFill 20 this can be applied with a trowel and you do not need to be particularly good at plastering as it sands down easily and has good adhesion to all sound surfaces. It also sets in 20 minutes.

Myself I would go with John’s suggestion and attach the skirting with gap filling glue like Gripfill. Once set fill any gaps with decorators caulk a mark one finger will produce a nice fillet and if the skirting already has a finish then mask along the top edge before making good with emulsion and to everyone’s eye it will look a straight wall and skirting.

Richard

[Peter Johnson]

+1 The point is that while you'll know about the gap, no one else will notice it.

[Robin]

I had a visitor who did notice - but he was (a) a retired chartered surveyor and (b) complimentary.

[alan_m]