Indy Total Construction

Standard features of all houses, however plain. Although each performs a specific job, they also provide ornamentation and a chance to vary decoration.

As the years pass, they’re bound to come in for a few knocks – and will most likely be covered in several layers of paint, which not only get chipped but also eventually clog up their profiles. Skirting boards, in particular, are also prone to rot if walls or floors are damp. However, since wood trim is in no way part of the house’s structure, repairs and even replacement should create no major problems.

Slight dents and cracks can often be repaired with cellulose filler – or perhaps glass fibre repair paste for larger or more accident-prone areas. In most cases you’ll have difficulty blending in the filler by hand with an ordinary filling knife. Instead, you can use a template cut to the profile of the molding from plastic sheet (a large plastic ice-cream container is ideal), or hardboard or cardboard; run it along to smooth the surface after applying the filler.

If the damage is more serious, you may be able to saw and/or chisel out the bad part to leave clean edges, and glue and pin in a small piece or pieces of prepared molding, or else plain timber shaped to fit.

If patching and filling won’t work, you need a completely new piece. This, however, can be a snag if your existing molding is one of the scores of obsolete types, because you won’t be able to match it off the shelf.

You may occasionally be able to buy something suitable – on site where an old house is being demolished or renovated, or perhaps from a demolition contractor who stocks secondhand timber. Otherwise, many joinery firms will cut a molding specially if you take in a sample of the pattern; but that’s likely to prove very expensive.

Your next option is to substitute a readily available pattern of molding throughout the room. But that’s a pity – not to say a lot of trouble – if most of it is sound. A third possibility, probably the most attractive if you only need a small piece, is to make it yourself. You can mold the shape with a power router, or perhaps a plough plane, combination plane or scratch stock.

A scratch stock consists of a piece of steel (for example part of a hacksaw blade) ground and/or filed to the profile you want. It is then clamped with screws between two pieces of hardwood in an improvised stock, and scraped along the timber till the desired shape emerges.

Externally curved moldings, such as plain chamfered skirting and architrave, can of course usually be formed with an ordinary bench plane and glasspaper. Lastly, it’s sometimes possible to make the molding up in sections from smaller ones, glued together and filled where necessary.

The idea of an architrave is to hide the join between a door or window frame or lining and the surrounding plaster

A loose architrave can be nailed back in place to the door frame, or even screwed to the surrounding masonry if you drill right through it with a masonry bit and insert wall- plugs to take the screws. But removal and fixing are both easier than for skirting, so replacement is usually the sensible alternative to major repairs. You just lever the existing architrave off, and nail the new one on.

On a brick or block wall, you usually nail through the molding’s inner edge and into the doorframe, lining or ‘wrought grounds’ with 25 mm (1 in) oval nails; lost-head nails or panel pins can also be used. But if necessary you can nail through the middle of the molding and into the wall itself, using cut nails for medium-hard blocks if you like, and masonry nails for bricks and hard blocks. If you find that there are rough (concealed) grounds between the plaster and the frame or lining, then nail into those. On a stud wall, nail into the studs.

At the bottom, the upright pieces butt against the floor and the ends of the skirting. At the_ top the corners are mitred. A good idea is to start by cutting off three pieces of molding which are manageable but still slightly too long. Then you can mark off the heights of the two upright ones (which may of course differ a bit, depending on whether the floor is flat or level), mitre their top ends and fix them loosely to the wall.

This makes it easy to mark off the exact length of the top piece. Mitre its ends, position it, and make any adjustments – by moving the uprights slightly, and even shaving the mitred ends with a sharp chisel or block plane if necessary. Then nail all three pieces finally in place, and pin the mitres from the top as for skirting boards.

When mitring, always make quite sure you’re cutting the right way round. That sounds silly, but you’ll find it’s all too easy to waste whole pieces by mistake

Failing that, a hacksaw should do the job.

In certain places — eg, the backs of alcoves — the skirting board is held in position by the two pieces at right angles to it. So, unless you remove at least one of those first, sawing the board out is your only option. A flooring saw may work. Otherwise drill a series of holes in line dOwn the face of the skirting, and use a chisel to chop out the waste between the holes so you can prise out the two ends of the board. Pipework and other obstacles sometimes force the same solution.

If a length of skirting refuses to come away completely, you may still be able to make sawing easier by levering enough of it out to push timber wedges behind it. In all cases, it’s best to saw at an angle of 45° across the thickness. If you’re just removing a section, cut the new piece to the same angle when you come to fix that in place.

Always use 45° cuts, rather than butt joins, if you have to make up a long piece from two shorter ones. They’ll be less conspicuous, especially if you site the join near an out-of- the-way corner.

Skirting boards are generally the widest and longest moldings around the house. They’re fixed, of course, along the bottom of walls, where they prevent damage to wall coverings and make a neat join with the floor.

Sometimes plain square-edged timber – say 150x25mm (6xl in) planed – forms a skirting, but molded pieces arc more usual. Nowadays ‘torus’, ‘ovolo’, ‘ogee’ and the plain chamfered and rounded types are by far the commonest. Plastic skirting boards are another modern development.

A gap between the skirting and the floor surface can easily be hidden with a quadrant molding – nailed to the skirting. not the floor, so any shrinkage or swelling in the floor won’t open up cracks visible from above.

If a skirting board has simply come loose, use a torch to look behind it for any wooden battens or plugs into which the original fixings may go. Then nail through into these. If the plaster continues to the floor, nail through it into the masonry behind. But if there’s bare brickwork without such battens or plugs – or if your nailing loosens previously sound fixings – you’ll have to use countersunk screws and wallplugs, inserted into holes made with a masonry drill.

If, however, actual damage or rot demands the removal of one or more whole sections, a bolster chisel makes a good lever for prising boards off. The best place to begin removal is at an external corner; otherwise take the overlapping board at an internal corner, or start at the point where the skirting meets the doorway.

Usually skirting boards are nailed in place, but you must be alert for screws (their heads may be covered with filler or even wooden plugs). Unscrew them. first, or, if that’s impossible, cut away a little plaster above the skirting board and slip a cold chisel behind the skirting to chop through them before you finish prising the board off.