How to increase depth of skirting?

Dace

Dace

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Replacing one side of the room, have given up matching it due to the whole house having some bizarre skirting with dado attached on top of it. The problem is still that the whole thing is 30mm deep and I dont want to burn money on custom made skirting of that depth.
 
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When people talk about depth of skirting they normally mean height. I have a feeling you mean thickness. Easy enough job to do, though - get the local timber yard to do you some 30mm wide rips of 12mm MDF and glue them to the back of your 18mm skirting top and bottom*, if your skirting is MDF. If your skirting is softwood, purchase some ready-machined 12mm thick planed softwood stop lath and glue that along the top and bottom* edges at the back. Use a block plane or hand plane to plane in the top edges of the skirtings nice and flush.

* If you still have the softwood grounds for the bottom of the skirting attached to the wall, just add the top filler piece.

This is a fairly standard work around - just make sure your architraves will accommodate it.

BTW this is not at all bizarre - it was common in larger Victorian and Edwardian houses for skirtings like that to be made up on site and fitted onto softwood timber grounds at the foot of the walls. You may come across anything from 2- to 5-piece skirting made-up this way. I've replaced a lot of this stuff over the years and even built matching 5-part 14in high boxing to hide radiator pipes in one listed building. The top "dado" section isn't dado rail, it's more like a sort of bolection moulding or a picture frame moulding with a big rebate at the front, but either way I've never seen an off-the-shelf moulding quite like that, so I think bespoke would be the only way match it. But would you want to?
 
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JobAndKnock said:
When people talk about depth of skirting they normally mean height. I have a feeling you mean thickness. Easy enough job to do, though - get the local timber yard to do you some 30mm wide rips of 12mm MDF and glue them to the back of your 18mm skirting top and bottom*, if your skirting is MDF. If your skirting is softwood, purchase some ready-machined 12mm thick planed softwood stop lath and glue that along the top and bottom* edges at the back. Use a block plane or hand plane to plane in the top edges of the skirtings nice and flush.

* If you still have the softwood grounds for the bottom of the skirting attached to the wall, just add the top filler piece.

This is a fairly standard work around - just make sure your architraves will accommodate it.

BTW this is not at all bizarre - it was common in larger Victorian and Edwardian houses for skirtings like that to be made up on site and fitted onto softwood timber grounds at the foot of the walls. You may come across anything from 2- to 5-piece skirting made-up this way. I've replaced a lot of this stuff over the years and even built matching 5-part 14in high boxing to hide radiator pipes in one listed building. The top "dado" section isn't dado rail, it's more like a sort of bolection moulding or a picture frame moulding with a big rebate at the front, but either way I've never seen an off-the-shelf moulding quite like that, so I think bespoke would be the only way match it. But would you want to?
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Thanks for the interesting information. No I can't be bothered to match it. Although now a lot cheaper due to reduced thickness the price was still fairly expensice due to needing 25 cm of depth (£300+ down to £130 for just one side of the room but that did include primed and fully painted).

I really couldnt be bothered to piece together something like the original. Am not looking forward to replacing skirting in the future, the whole house is parque/laminate.
 
The old skirting was just made up to 30mm by that top strip though, so I think I'll be okay skipping bottom sections. Thanks again.
 
That means there is probably a timber lath nailed to the bottom of the wall or to the floor, or (in rare instances) that there is a groove planed into the floor. Bear that in mind - these skirtings normally have a floor lath and often a wall lath, too

I wasn't recommending anyone piecing this stuff together. The building I referred to had 4 or 5 large rooms in a former bank (the biggest around 1000 square feet) and the skirting comprised a 2-part face with a step, a support piece at the back of that, a bespoke moulding for the front corner and a timber rear piece as a spacer/packer off the wall. Every room had a different height of skirting and there were different thicknesses, too, depending on how many pipes were hidden in there. A lot of the time we had one joiner nailing in the two battens (one on the floor, the other on the wall) to work to, a second joiner actually cutting and fixing the boxing whilst I and an apprentice were going like the billy-o ripping the face pieces down from 8 x 4ft sheets, routing the rebates and assembling the skirting it for the fixer. I think we made about 1000 linear feet of the stuff at the rate of about 200 feet a day, and I never want to do that job again. Not a fun job
 
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I hope you managed to find easier work since? I had my renderer complaining that now that he's self employed even after day hours he's on the phone all evening, every evening. Is it best for tradesmen to gravitate to building a bigger company so they can hire someone to handle calls etc? Perhaps it's different betwee trades.

An apprenticeship still sounds better than university though. I just completed my foundation in engineering and not sure if I want to go back after a year's break, I had an extremely hard time remembering anything when I couldn't connect it to things I can handle regularly in reality. Apprenticeships sound good to me even if tough in other ways at the start, it's one of my 2 back-up plans atm :)
 
Dace said:
I had my renderer complaining that now that he's self employed even after day hours he's on the phone all evening, every evening.
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It's just part of running a small business - any small business. I've run my own show and subbed for other people - subbing is less effort (no after hours homework, book-keeping, etc) the pay is generally more regular, no dealing with the awkward ones we all get from time to time, but overall there is less risk, so less money.

Dace said:
An apprenticeship still sounds better than university though.
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In the trades apprentices get paid a pittance, and how well you turn out is partly down to whether or not you are working for a good gaffer or not. If you end up working for an idiot or a shirker (and there are enough of them about) it probably won't end well, unless you realise and get out of that situation. If you get someone who'll make time to coach you, it will go a lot better

Funny what you say about uni, though, I intended to go to university, but didn't. When I did eventually do it, it was part time as a mature student, and I was 25+ years older than any of my course, which was a bit of a downer, but at least it meant there were less distractions to deal with! (alcohol, drugs and the opposite sex, I mean)
 
I'm taking a year out to deal with a lot of problems, will go to DIY courses and try to get as far through a foundational EE text book by myself. If I havn't managed at least getting half way though it by the end of the year, I'll judge myself as too thick and not return. I wish I had started part-time, I don't think I can move to open uni from my current full time course.

Yeah I didn't enjoy being around that many teenagers recently, was twice their age.
Thanks for the apprenticeship info, i'll look into it in more detail if I don't go back.
 
JobAndKnock said:
it meant there were less distractions to deal with! (alcohol, drugs and the opposite sex, I mean)
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Blimey, that was the best part of university. I skipped the drugs and did the other two to excess...
 
Well, by the time I went I was too old and decrepit for two of the above, and for the remaining one I was limited by the need to work the following day. I'll leave you to figure out which was which
 
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