Skirting board help!

[Turbo-G]

Hi,

I'm currently in the process of renovating the living room of our 1906 Edwardian property, and I'm in need of a small amount of skirting board (< 1m), to finish either side of the fireplace surround that we've reinstated.

I've looked on a few online skirting board specialists, and don't seem to be able to match the profile of ours. The boards are approximately 21cm tall and 2cm thick at the thickest part.

Can anybody identify the profile used here? Or, recommend the best way of getting some lengths cut to match these, that would be appreciated!


skirting1 by grantarcher84, on Flickr

Thanks in advance.

Grant

 

[plasticpigeon]

This might be tough. There are so many profiles, with lots of local variation, many being unique to local joinery shops. The best place I have found is midland mouldings. It costs around £80 to have cutters made so if you can fins something close or adapt something then that would be the best option. I have found loads of skirting for my place by indulging in local skip diving.

http://www.midlandwoodworking.co.uk/productskirtingboard.html

 

[Moo]

Perhaps you could get a decent match by cobbling together several off-the-shelf mouldings.

 

[Penners]

Perhaps you could get a decent match by cobbling together several off-the-shelf mouldings.

I think that might be your answer, depending on how accurately you feel that you must match the original.

If you were to cut the top strip off an ogee moulding and plant the top of a torus moulding above it, you could probably get something pretty similar to the original.

 

[Feltwell]

All good advice above. Have you looked at Dressers? they have a better range than most.

http://www.dressermouldings.com/products/mouldings/timber-skirtings.html

Failing them, for a 1m section I reckon you could make something up pretty close to what you need from combining stock mouldings, rather than going to the expense of getting a cutter made. Do try your local joinery shops though - if it's a particular local pattern then you may just hit lucky and find they already have the cutters, that's what happened to me.

 

[Penners]

One further thought: if you do end up having that moulding machined up for you by a local supplier, don't skimp on the quantity that you buy. Remember that the great majority of the cost will lie in setting up a special run on the machine - the cost of the timber will be a small proportion of what you pay. So buy a generous amount for this job (just in case you make mistakes!), and if you feel that there's any possibility at all that you might want more of that pattern in the future, add it to this order.

 

[Nimster]

Or you could do my trick, which would be to remove a section of skirting that will be behind a dresser/other piece of furniture (so won't be seen) and pretend it hasn't happened

 

[agbagb]

It sometimes surprises people what can be replicated using standard router bits (only economical for small amounts)

That profile looks like a possibility if you know anyone router and some time spare.

more details here

 

[Owain]

for less than a yard it might be as well to make a template of the profile and set to with a batten and a chisel, working along the batten until a fac simile or replica of the item is obtained.

 

[Penners]

It sometimes surprises people what can be replicated using standard router bits

agbagb is quite correct - you can do a lot by combining the profiles of standard router bits. However, if you're not an experienced router user please don't just buy yourself one and start buzzing away without any kind of research or training on how to use it. In inexperienced hands a router can be a very dangerous animal.

 

[Moo]

I like Nimster's idea.
In fact, I'm going to copy it when I get round to sorting out my front sitting-room.



ps
One of the local agents did a leaflet drop inviting us to have our house valued so, in a spirit of enquiry, we did.
It would seem that in a little over eighteen months our house has nearly doubled in value.
And if you think he was rather over-egging the pudding, try googling "SE22 property for sale" , set the search filter to Most Recent, and tick the 'include sold and under offer' box.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Lucky you. If you sell up in a few years, you can buy back your old house and have a stash left over.

What I want to know, what i really want to know, is how can soo many people afford to spend so much on their property. I have two friends that have bought London properties recently. One works for a hedge fund, and the other for the Bank of England. These two guys are high earners, but have both bought nice houses in the up and coming areas around Peckham/Dulwich not in the more expensive north London areas. Surely not everybody buying in London has such jobs.

I often wonder where I went wrong with my career, i think I'm probably too nice and not pushy enough.

 

[Moo]

I often wonder about that, too. In our neck of the woods the houses were built for poor but respectable workers. They are little more than cottages. But people are paying over half a million pounds for an 'unmodernised' two/three-bedder, and then shelling out tens of thousands for side returns and loft extensions, not to speak of ultra-modern bathrooms and kitchens.
Mind you, one 'upside' is that the local joineries are kept very busy indeed satisfying the appetite for proper sash windows.

 

[dandrew]

Grant,
the profile you have would be called (from the top down) torus, cove and ovolo. It is a custom profile that you will not be able to buy off the shelf unless you are very lucky and Dresser do one to match. Others have mentioned the possibility of having a short amount machined up using a router and standard bits, which is clearly a possibility and I guess that most joiners could do this for you. The alternative is to do it by hand using moulding planes (hollows, rounds and rebates), which are more soothing to listen to but only used by a few stalwarts these days. I've done this myself when I needed to do a few repair jobs requiring short lengths (and even longer lengths when I needed a new cover mould for my front door frame [torus, cove and fillet if you're interested]). For just a metre length I doubt the price difference would be much.

David

 

[LadyArowana]

Lucky you. If you sell up in a few years, you can buy back your old house and have a stash left over.

What I want to know, what i really want to know, is how can soo many people afford to spend so much on their property. I have two friends that have bought London properties recently. One works for a hedge fund, and the other for the Bank of England. These two guys are high earners, but have both bought nice houses in the up and coming areas around Peckham/Dulwich not in the more expensive north London areas. Surely not everybody buying in London has such jobs.

I often wonder where I went wrong with my career, i think I'm probably too nice and not pushy enough.

Thinking about our building in N.London, my neighbours that I know well enough to know what they do are, a songwriter ( apparently has a grammy ), an author and lecturer whose last book did exceedingly well, a retired oilfield engineer, a some retired doctors, then downstairs an assortment of lawyers, hedge fund person, more bankers, a screenwriter, a mysterious Russian, a foreign property developer. Nobody who actually makes anything that I can think of, the closest is a place that's rented out but owned by a New Zealander who farms something and another also rented out by someone who is in America making food products.