Luckily, our house still has most of its skirting and original architrave and although it isn’t all in the best of condition, I’m really keen to preserve those original features. Sure they’re massively overpainted, chipped and looking a bit tired in their age, but that suits me just fine. I love a house that sings about its age – rustic floors, repaired skirting boards, overpainted architrave (within reason) – it’s all about telling a story as to how the house has lived and how it’s been lived in.
Sadly though, some of our skirtings have been replaced (and they now mismatch!) and others are too damaged to be repaired. This meant one thing – finding replacement skirting that matched the originals exactly. And now, with the floorboards sanded, tiling finished and kitchen installed, we figured this was a job we finally needed to tackle.
We’ve changed the layout of our downstairs quite a bit (three rooms into one!) so we obviously had areas where we were missing skirting boards as well. I was really keen to re-instate new skirting boards to the areas that needed them, but they needed to be an exact match to the originals, so we didn’t have to replace the whole lot.
So when Skirting World got in touch asking if they could help supply us with some skirting, I knew we had to say yes! And thankfully they did indeed have an exact match for our skirting, the right profile at the right height and the right thickness too. Hurrah!
And in case you’re interested, we have the mini torus skirting, (we chose MDF) 170mm height and 15mm thick. If Skirting World doesn’t have a match for your skirting, then they can also make a bespoke profile as well so you have one that does match – amazing! Here’s a comparison of our original skirting boards against the new skirting.
And here’s a quick look at the not-so-original mismatching skirting, which is the piece we’ll be replacing. We actually think this length of skirting may actually be original, but the decorative top part has been sliced off – the horror!
In order to carefully remove old skirting boards without damaging the walls, you need to take your time to very carefully pry the boards off the wall. This means getting a crowbar (we tend to use a flat head screwdriver to start with!) and inserting it into the gap at the top, then gently wiggling it to loosen the board from the wall.
You want to work your way along the length of the board doing this in order to loosen each nail. If you go all in and try to remove the board from the first point of you getting your crowbar in, then you’ll either bring half the plaster down with the board, or you’ll snap the board in two – not ideal if you intend on reusing it!
Old Victorian skirting boards are attached to the wall with big old nails into wooden wedges which are sandwiched between brickwork. As a top tip for removing old victorian skirting boards and attaching new ones – I recommend leaving the wooden wedges in the walls. These will actually be really useful for attaching new boards as you can simply nail back onto them.
If you’re unable to remove the nails from the wedges without wrenching the wood out the wall, you can easily break the exposed part of nails off (rather than putting it out), leaving the rest of it in the wood. These kind of nails are very easy to break, just give it a gentle up and down wiggle with some pliers and they’ll snap right off.
Once the glue had dried, I gave the skirting a couple of coats of white eggshell and also caulked the small gap between the top of the board and the wall.
So here it is, looking perfectly matched in the room against our old and original skirting boards. Although obviously, much crisper and less tired-looking! Together though, I think they blend in pretty well – just what I wanted! I’m sure you can tell which is old/new here – but you do have to actually really look to notice the difference from a distance.
So I think these boards are a pretty amazing match and I’ve even bought some more lengths for the conservatory as well. I’m a huge fan of keeping the originals if you can – but if you need to replace any, then I definitely recommend checking out Skirting World. I would absolutely always recommend MDF boards over pine too – I’m seriously never going back.
In terms of costings, I was pretty surprised at how much they cost. I always thought MDF wasn’t worth buying as it’s vastly more expensive, but a full length of 3m board cost £13 in the size we needed, which I thought wasn’t too bad. Smaller heights are much cheaper, but of course, if you need a lot then that does very quickly add up (another reason why we like to keep the originals), but it’s definitely well worth the money for its quality and especially if you’re as picky as I am about matching old boards to new ones! 😉
I’d love to know your thoughts on keeping old, somewhat tired-looking skirting boards and whether you’ve ever had to match new for old too?
*I was gifted the skirting board used in this post, however, I liked it so much, I went back and ordered more. I only ever recommend products I would genuinely buy myself – All views and content on the blog are my own. 🙂
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4 Comments
Forgive the observation but saying MDF skirting boards are more expensive than pine is incorrect. Solid wood is clearly a dearer option and arguably for a very good reason – if correctly prepared and installed it will last much longer, be more resistant to damage and frankly look better. Ok it’s just my opinion and experience of actually using both types over more years than I care to remember. You pays your money and takes your choice!
Appreciate your opinions! If you look on Wickes and compare say, the Ogee skirting – they sell pine 19mm x 145mm (3.6m 2pack) for £25.92 compared with MDF 18mm x 144mm (3.6m 2pack) for £33.76. Our local timber store also sells MDF for a higher price than wood, which is why I said I’ve personally always found MDF to cost more. I agree with you that timber is far more traditional though and certainly has its place!
Hi Kezzabeth, love your work. I have been restoring a simple Georgian terraced cottage in Devon over the last few years. Nothing too fancy, a simple one bedroom, small bathroom, larger living room and a tiny kitchen. Like you, on a really slim budget. My Wife and I became known as ‘skip rats’. See a skip, see something useful, ask and upcycle something for free. Anyway, I have recently been replacing skirting boards. The landing was completely stripped and rebuilt. Mainly owing to the fact that when I suspected the landing wass sounded too hollow, exploring what lay behing plasterboard revealed-there was nothing much behind it ! So, stonework was replaced. We replace period features where we can, so I had some anxiety as to add some skirting to the landing area. Like yours, not one wall in the old cottage is straight. I found that a combination of MDF skirting board on the landing worked well. Pleasing to the eye, better fitting to all the shapes and wall curves and corners. The bedroom is being fitted with tall wood skirting. I gave it great thought last night. Read your article and comments today, and decided to return the bedroom skirting as originally fitted. Torus pattern wood. I am also about to fit wooden sash windows in the next few weeks. Conservation Officers were great, Building Control Officers not so. But that’s an different story! Keep up the good work. Look back at your old pictures of your house and you will see you have preserved the old house and have the look and home you planned. Well done !
Oh wow, that sounds like a fabulous project! It’s funny how something so simple like the design of skirting can really make a difference to the feel/originality of the house. It’s worth the stress with the wonky walls, haha!
I love that you’re both ‘skip rats’ too! We’ve found some amazing stuff in skips over the years – a fireplace (still not fitted anywhere, mind) and a great wine rack are some of my faves. It’s madness what people throw out, but I’m totally the same, can’t walk by a skip without getting a little look 😉
Thank you so much for such a nice comment and good luck with your sash windows! Keep us posted how your house is getting on!