help! need solution for fitting smaller skirting to walls

[woodworm2009]

Hello

I have recently had to rip out old skirting boards from downstairs living room of old victorian terraced house. whatever was behind the skirting boards has crumbled away and there is just the brick work.

The skirting board was very high and i cannot replace it with same size (too expensive!) So need to replace it with smaller size.

What do i do about filling the gap between existing bottom of plastered wall and where the new skirting will be?

I had thought i could use plasterboard fixed onto the brickwork and then plaster skim down the wall over the plasterboard and put skirting over that...
seemed like a really clever plan but i have read loads of topics in the forums and am now worried about the DPC, bridging and rising damp issues etc etc.

I'm really stuck and desperately need to move on with this job - its my mums house and it only started out as treating the floorboards and has now turned into this skirting board stumper. Please help.[/b]

 

[andyandy2]

By the time you've made good the walls and decoration, it would probably be just as expensive as buying the proper skirting board. Try specialist timber merchants, some of the very deep skirtings come in 2 sections.
If its a victorian terrace with tall ceilings, it will look much better than small skirting, you may also have to make good or change architrave if its been cut away for skirting

 

[^woody^]

Consider a two section skirting where the bottom section is some plain PAR timber and then you can fix some standard torus or something above it.

If you do this, chamfer the joining edges to allow fixing and hiding any gap

 

[woodworm2009]

hi thanks for advice.

did think about buying wood and either passing it through a table saw to get chamfered edge or using a router but if it goes a little wrong it'll look terrible!

Also the skirting has been changed to small 95mm in front room, the hallway skirting is absolutely giant compared to what was in living room too. so nothing is matching and to be quite honest this is not a do it up to sell job, it was just a quickly treat the woodworm in floor and get my mum back in her home asap, the budget is already escalating as we will now need to wall paper etc also.

Is ther any other solution to using a big skirting board? if i did try to bring skirting up to bottom of the wall it would be arouns 250mm high.
all other skirting is just bullnose/chamfer.

 

[woodworm2009]

Hi. I really didn't want to make the skirting board higher than it was (250mm) and actually wanted to lower it. I am really trying to find out what i can use inbetween the bottom of the plastered wall and where the skirting will start... i had thought about putting plasterboard and skimming but was unsure about the 'bridging the DPC'.

 

[holmslaw]

Get a plasterer in to make good, just leaving a 15 - 20 mm gap above the floor boards.
You won't bridge the dpc because that should be below the underside of the floor joists.

 

[woodworm2009]

hey thanks loads, that is what i think i really needed to know. - Not to call in a plasterer as too much money! but to know that i'm not bridging the DPC etc.