Laminate Floors - Alternative to Beading

ruamire

I'm going to start putting down Laminate floors in the next few days.

My question is, are there any alternatives to ripping off the skirting boards or putting down beading to get a nice finish?

I'd love if somebody could point me to a magic machine that would cut the bottom off the skirting boards without me having to tear them off the wall but I think magic is the operative word there...

My Skirting is nailed and glued to the walls, which are plaster board. I'm afraid I'll ruin them and there's 7!!! doors to work around too. An all round pain.

Any advise is very welcome!

Slainte

smashey

You don't have to remove the skirting. As the laminate floor is "floating", just lay it up to the skirting and then nail the beading to the skirting. I did it in one of my bedrooms.

Mountjoy Mugger

Consider getting a cork expansion strip instead of nailing the beading to the skirting boards.

http://www.buy4now.ie/atlantic/tipsadvicecontent.aspx?loc=90&menuId=79&pmenuId=0

HTH

ruamire

Yeah, will get cork for the expansion space alright.

Anyone ever get somebody to take off the skirting and redo it? Any idea of cost?

GreeBo

Its hard to get skirting off in such a way that it can go back on if its been nailed.
Also the wall will get some abuse.
Basically you need to lever against the plasterboard to get the nail out, unless you want to try drill the head off or something.

The only only other bright idea I had was to use a small hole saw and just cut around the nails, lift the skirting off and then patch and paint the skirting.

Obviously if you are not painting it it wont really work...

ruamire

Nice idea alright but they glued them to the wall too... Painful!

GreeBo

Well thats in case of earthquakes....:rolleyes:


Are you planning on painting them?
Its not that expensive to get some pine skirting and just replace them...fix it to the battens with screws and mark where the screws are on the floor (if you can) for the next time/bloke.

Id say it will be nigh on impossible to remove them without breaking them and/or the walls

galwaydude18

use a handsaw resting on a scrap of laminate flooring and saw of the bottom of the skirting. It will take a while but well worth it as you will make a mess of the wall if you take it off since it's glued to the walls!

dubtom

Here's what we did, lay the floor, buy new shirting and place over the old stuff. The new stuff, if it's normal size, usually 5 or 6 inch, will stick over the old. You can get 1/4' x 1/4' strips of wood the same as the shirting and placed them in the gap between the wall and new skirting. I got taller skirting than I needed and cut the excess off with a table saw. The result is what looks like a thick skirting. If you use a wood like mahogany and varnish it they turn out very nice.

Ballyman

ruamire wrote:

I'm going to start putting down Laminate floors in the next few days.

My question is, are there any alternatives to ripping off the skirting boards or putting down beading to get a nice finish?

I'd love if somebody could point me to a magic machine that would cut the bottom off the skirting boards without me having to tear them off the wall but I think magic is the operative word there...

My Skirting is nailed and glued to the walls, which are plaster board. I'm afraid I'll ruin them and there's 7!!! doors to work around too. An all round pain.

Any advise is very welcome!

Slainte

Hi

I'm in the middle of a very similar job at home. My skirting boards were all nailed on also. On three sides of the room the walls were timber with plasterboard on them. The previous owner had nailed and glued the boards on also.

I had to use a wide nail bar and hammer to get them off. As you can imagine the plasterboard was slightly damaged in some places by the time I was finished as the glue pulled off paint and plasterboard above the height of the skirtingboard:) On one side the wall was concrete and they had used 3" steel nails to nail the boards on:eek: I wanted to vry when I saw this. When I pulled the skirting off, the nails stayed in place and I couldn't get them out without seriously damaging the plasterboard so I used an angle grinder and cut them off.

All the damage to plasterboard I repaired with patching plaster I bought in Atlantic Homecare. It's difficult to get very smooth but once it dries you can sand it down to wall smoothness. You wouldn't even know it was there now. I was repainting the walls anyway so this is why I could do this.

All the above took me a long time, between crying, driving over and back to Atlantic/Woodies and actually doing it. I am in no way skilled whatsoever as a handyman, most times I'm lucky to drive a nail straight so if I could do this then it would be a piece of piss to someone who is kind of handy. Best of luck.

TempestSabre

some serious guntering going on on these days.

GreeBo

Might be worthwhile running a blade across the top of the skirting to minimise any tearing where visible.
Also, if its glued on use a wall paper stripper/scrapper to free it from the wall before you start to lever off the nails.

antoinolachtnai

You could also fill with coloured silcone, don't know how this would work out in practice if you did the whole perimeter of the room that way.