Boring skirting board/carpet bodge question

Depends on how thick your underlay is and whether or not you will be using carpet bars.

Measure them in the shop.

Carpet bar? Is that the gripper strip stuff? If so, yes. I guess I can ring up Carpetright and see if anyone knows the underlay thickness.

EDIT: It's 'Celestial' at 10.3mm! Blimey, that seems thick compared to what we have now. Have I been oversold?

EDIT again, and the pile height of the carpet is about 17mm. Sounds like I'll be wading through it.

I'd wait until the carpets fitted and then you can make it look perfect.  paint it before fitting and I can't see much risk to damaging the new carpet

I'd rather they fitted it up tight to an existing board, but that's a possibility.

I probably need 10-12mm gap to get it aligned, and it looks like I'm getting a fair bit of that from the underlay.

If carpet is coming up for replacement, surely there is skirting somewhere else in the room so you can just rip up a corner of carpet and copy the skirting height?

EDIT again, and the pile height of the carpet is about 17mm. Sounds like I’ll be wading through it.

Shag-tastic!, is this a homage to the 1970's.

The underlay will be butted up to the carpet bars so you'll be left with a combined height of carpet bars and carpet. if you fit the skirting boards after the carpet is laid then that'll most likely annoy the carpet fitters as it'll make their job harder to fit and cut the carpet.

Best to ask them beforehand.

If carpet is coming up for replacement, surely there is skirting somewhere else in the room so you can just rip up a corner of carpet and copy the skirting height?

Existing skirt is 100 years old and I've been able to find a match for the top but not the height. I'm not after perfection, just close enough so it won't annoy the shit out of me every day for the next 15 years.

The original job was just to rip out and replace the bathroom by Christmas...this is a speedy side job because it would be 'nice' to get new carpets in and repaint the entire hall, landing and stairs by then too...

Best to ask them beforehand.

I'm not sure Carpetright have got a scooby who the fitters are, but they're measuring up officially on Tuesday so I won't fix until then.

is this a homage to the 1970’s.

I am slightly worried about this. At least there won't be a lip up onto the bathroom flooring now.

fill in the gap under the skirting with a piece of timber?

I recently had chep carpet fitted.  I had to take 18mm off some of the doors

Errr, why don't you just size the bottom half to also match the size of the existing.

As TJ said, just add timber at the bottom to extend.  Thin layer of filler and then sand before painting. We've done this in our 100+ yr old house.

Yeah, glue a strip on the bottom plane it flush. Sorted.

It'll show if you don't, the carpet will look different whether the gap is visible or not.

None of the local timber merchants had the right combination of height and design. I suppose I could have got some made bespoke, but tbh I just needed to get on with it.

Was hoping to avoid gluing and planing. Mainly because I don't own a plane. I've bought enough new tools for the other job. Having said that, I can see planing down the underside of the front door in my near future.

if you fit the skirting boards after the carpet is laid then that’ll most likely annoy the carpet fitters as it’ll make their job harder to fit and cut the carpet.

If you fit the skirting boards after the carpet is laid then the carpet fitters will have left by then?

Is this actually a thing? Surely skirting boards go down to the floorboards and the carpet butts up against it.

So, is the consensus that 10mm is too much of a gap, even with 10mm of underlay, grippers and 15mm odd of carpet?

#threadhijack

I need a section of skirting to replace a gap left after ripping out an old fireplace. I need like 2m or something, if that, but it seems most places want to sell it in lengths of about half a mile. Can anyone suggest a source please?

Most of the Wickes type stores will sell it in 2.4m lengths. Is that too long for you?

10 mm gap is not a lot.  many of my skirtings have that much gap anyway but I did fill them all with caulk before fitting carpets to eliminate chance of drafts

The underlay fits on the inner edge of the gripper bar so that you get a smooth line over the gripper. The carpet is fitted inline with the skirting and not under it. So fit your skirting and fill in the gap underneath with whatever looks ok depending on whatever the gap looks like.

Cheers all. With a 10mm gap between floorboard and skirt, and 10mm underlay, the carpet should be butting up against the skirt and hiding whatever I've put in the gap? Strips of 10mm ply seem to be what I have lying around.

I hope you opted for a Tidyman's carpet.

Everyone loves a deep satisfying shag

Can anyone suggest a source please?

Get down to your local timber yard with biscuits and speak to the yard workers. They've usually got a partially-split/damaged board that they can't sell

Most of my rooms the carpet tucks under the small gap in the skirting, where I’ve replaced skirting has been fitted after the flooring has gone down.  To be fair that’s mostly been karndean though not carpet.

I get my skirting from skirtingdirect as the original is lambs tongue and it seems the only place that does the profile that I’ve found so far,  minimum order is something like £300 which is annoying if you just want a small amount.

re getting small strips, perfect excuse for getting a table saw to cut stuff down to the perfect size.

Most of the Wickes type stores will sell it in 2.4m lengths. Is that too long for you?

I didn't look at Wickes, I'll give it a try. Ta.