Skirting Boards near you

Cutting, routing and sanding skirting produces wood dust, and wood dust has legal exposure limits in Great Britain. HSE states that the workplace exposure limit for hardwood dust is 3mg per cubic metre based on an 8-hour time-weighted average, and that the limit for softwood dust is 5mg per cubic metre on the same basis. Where hardwood and softwood dusts are mixed, HSE says the hardwood limit of 3mg per cubic metre applies to all the wood dust in that mixture, so a carpenter working oak and redwood on the same day is working to the lower figure.

The reason for the limits is not nuisance. HSE states that wood dust can cause serious health problems including asthma, that carpenters and joiners face a risk of asthma four times greater than other British workers, that hardwood dust can cause cancer, particularly of the nose, and that settled dust contains the fine particles most likely to damage the lungs. That last point is the one homeowners should register: the visible pile on the floor is the harmless part, and the dangerous fraction is what is still in the air and on the surfaces hours later.

HSE is also blunt about masks. Its construction dust guidance explains that a workplace exposure limit is the legal maximum after the right controls have been used, not a target, and that unless there are real problems doing so you should not just rely on a mask for high risk tasks, because such tasks can produce more dust than a mask can cope with and because a mask protects only the person wearing it. On a domestic trim job that translates into a simple expectation: cutting done outside or in a sheeted-off area, a saw and sander connected to on-tool extraction with a suitable vacuum, and the room vacuumed rather than swept at the end of the day.

Removing the old skirting is the part that damages a house if it is rushed. Old board is usually nailed into timber grounds or straight into the plaster, and levering it off without first cutting the paint line along the top will pull the surface of the plaster away with it. A careful joiner scores the joint, works a bolster and a flat bar behind the board with a packer against the wall, and takes it off in whole lengths if any of it is going to be reused or copied.

Setting out comes next. The walls in an older British house are neither straight nor plumb, and the floor is rarely level, so the fitter works out where the long runs go, where the joints will land, and which corners will be scribed. Internal corners are scribed rather than mitred, which means cutting one board square into the corner and shaping the end of the second board to the profile of the first, because a scribed joint stays closed when the timber moves and a mitred one opens. External corners are mitred, and on an out-of-square corner the angle is taken from the wall rather than assumed to be 45 degrees.

Fixing depends on what is behind the plaster. Into studwork the board is screwed or nailed into the studs; into masonry it is fixed with screws into plugs or with a grab adhesive plus mechanical fixings; and on an uneven wall it is packed so that the top edge stays straight rather than following every hollow. Then the joints and fixing heads are filled, the top edge is caulked to the wall where the gap is fine and filled properly where it is not, and the trim is sanded and decorated. Ask whether decoration is included, because a fitted but unpainted skirting looks unfinished and MDF in particular needs its cut ends sealed.

Original joinery is one of the things heritage protection is actually about, so in a listed building the decision to strip out and replace skirting, architrave, dado rails and window boards is not purely yours. Interiors are covered as well as exteriors, and the consent regime under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 is dealt with in detail elsewhere on this site; the practical instruction here is narrow. Do not let anybody skip a length of original moulding before you have spoken to the local planning authority's conservation officer, and keep a surviving section even if the rest has to go, because it is the pattern from which a match is made.

Leasehold flats carry a different constraint, which is contractual rather than statutory. Many leases require the landlord's consent for alterations to the demised premises and some are specific about floor finishes and internal joinery, so a skirting replacement that goes hand in hand with a new hard floor can engage a clause the leaseholder has never read. Check the lease before the trim is ordered rather than after it is fitted.

There is one more thing to raise at quoting stage in a house built before 1992, and it belongs to the decorator as much as the joiner. Old paint layers on skirting can contain lead, and the risk comes from removing or sanding that paint rather than from leaving it alone. The detail of how old paint should and should not be taken back is covered in the painting guides on this site, and the point to carry here is simply that stripping original skirting in an old house is a question to ask before the sander comes out.

Trim is quoted on the metre run, but the metres are the least interesting part of the number. What actually moves it is the count of corners, because every internal corner is scribed and every external one mitred to the real angle of the wall; the height and the profile, since tall period sections cost more per metre and a bespoke profile has to be machined; and the state of the walls, because a wall that needs packing or making good after the old board comes off adds work that has nothing to do with joinery. Removing and disposing of the old trim, working around radiator pipes and fitted units, sealing and decorating, and matching a moulding that nobody stocks are the other variables, and they are the ones most often left out of the cheapest quotation.

Getting comparable quotes is what LokalMatch is for. Describe the job once with your postcode, saying which rooms, roughly how many metres, what the existing trim is and whether it must be matched, and joiners and carpenters working in your area get in touch. Homeowners pay nothing to post a request; the trades pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not do the joinery, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend the people who respond, so checking what is included, how the dust will be controlled and who is decorating afterwards is down to you.