How to fit skirting boards in 2023 

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Fair play to Robin and the crew ,not only running and working on these sites ,but taking the time to teach people the trade with great enthusiasm and the highest standard of work . It must add hours onto your week ,thanks Darren

I Love It When I See A Tradesman Teach An Apprentice Such High Qaulity Work And Paitence of a Saint

Ed is a lucky young man having a teacher as good as Robin. He will be a very good carpenter and he will be able to pass his knowledge on to the next generation of craftsman

A good tip which your painter will love you for as well is to run masking tape under the skirting before fitting it. Then when it comes to painting the skirting all your painter has to do afterwards is run a knife carefully down the corner, take the tape off and voila, perfectly painted skirting with no faff. Thanks for the vids robin, think the lad will be overtaking you soon with any luck 🤙

I’ve been an apprentice carpenter for just over 2 years now and stumbled across your RU-vid channel through the podcast as I am keen to learn more about my trade. Your channel is so informative and I’ve learned so many tips that have made my life on site much easier and allowed me to take an extra level of pride into my work. Keep up the great content 👍🏻

ED is doing very good for a beginner. He has a good teacher. 👍. I fit skirting very similar to this way. Grest video 👌🇮🇪.

I go anti clockwise round the room, you only have to scribe the right end of the board. Starrets angle finders good for saving time on awkward angles, mitre glue on externals. Robin gives clear informative instructions and goes the extra mile, i like the biscuit idea, but time consuming. Always good videos on this channel. I've started saying "and all the rest of it" lately haha

Ed’s got an awesome teacher. He’ll be a fabulous carpenter journeyman.

DIYer here and proud to have taught myself skirts after our new floor went down, earning myself a permanent chop saw in the process. Took a while to get everything perfect - a millimetre gap looks huge so precise measuring and getting used to kerf was key - but it was worth it and incredibly satisfying. Wish I’d had this video at the time though - all these little tips for things like managing kicked-out architraves or non-standard corners that help. Never seen anyone recommend a scribe template for internals though - I cut all mine independently and this would have saved me a lot of time. 😂👍🙏

“Tricks of the trade” and “pride in workmanship”…a great combination!✅

Very interesting to see the different techniques you use, and most helpful for the DIY'er. Much appreciated.

Hi Robin and crew. I start my carpentry apprenticeship beginning of September and all your videos have been a great help in this and with my own projects. Thank you 🙏

Excellent chaps! Proper craftsmen at work, I love the fixing methods for a permanent job. Well done Ed, you’re a great tradesman and to you Robin for having the belief in the young lad. Great video as always 👍👍

I was blown away watching how you do the cuts for a perfect fit. It caused me to look at the skirting on my house and saw the difference between your work and how they must have done it when they built my house. I love watching and learning although I am not a builder just love doing things with wood.

I can't believe I just watched the whole thing for absolutely no reason other than it was so good to watch it being done so well. Everyone doing skirting should watch this video!

Many thanks for taking the time to make videos like this Robin. After watching several times just fitted skirting to new loft room. Not quite Robin perfect but better than many tradesmen these day, thanks to your tutorials. Thanks for giving confidence and making a difference :-)

Mate I have work with numerous trades but got to say you are next level tradesmen and love watching your vids you have given me so many tips love it keep the vids coming respect 💪

Nice idea on the biscuits, never seen that before a bit ott but looks like you get the big bucks

Owner building in Sydney. These fantastic tutorials are so helpful. Things like the biscuits to keep joints flat and using super glue to easily make a difficult joint are incredibly helpful. 🤗 Well done Robin and great to see that Ed has a craftsman as a tutor. 👍

Edd must be a pleasure to teach . And has the best teacher of all time

Most of the walls I work on tend to be utterly devoid of anything like this so your (rather fantastic) tutorial goes out the window; getting the walls straight, level, plumb, flat would be another job in itself. After years of ‘winging it’ I’ve got my own methods to get them looking pretty decent and pretty fast. I don’t know if you could teach it pretty easy to be honest. You learn cause you have to.

Excellent job Robin, you definitely taught Edd the tricks of the trade.

Wow, I’m seriously impressed , and realise I need to slow down and aim for this level of work. Thanks for the reminder.

That is one lucky apprentice. Respect to Robin taking the time to teach. Bossing it 👍

A note for big Ed, I've run MDF skirting tight to aluminium doors before and found that in the winter you get a bit of condensation forming on the aluminium frame and it wicks up the skirting and can swell & stain it. I tend to leave a 3mm or so gap now and keep my 🤞

Another great piece of work and top marks for sharing your skills with Ed. It must be a great pleasure to see a young'un 'getting it' and producing such quality work. I've used AC50, acrylic adhesive, for mounting MDF skirting and I'd say it's a great product. On the only occasion I've had to remove a piece I used a sharpened hacksaw blade and just cut the adhesive as I gently pulled on the skirting.

Really nice seeing edd come along with some great work, really bright future for you mate 👍🏻. As always he's got the best in the business teaching him well done robin 👍🏻

This is 💯!! Sadly this is only how a very small percentage of carpenters conduct their work. The attention to detail here is fantastic. Decorating over your work would be a pleasure guys. Keep up the amazing work and superb videos. 🙌🏻

Pure gold for an apprentice who Mainly does first fix, keep them coming please and liking the new channel! 🙌

Love this guide. Biscuit joints to square things flush is a great idea especially if you working on your own and faces will always have the same datum. One template to do all of the scribes. Cutting down repeated measurements. Maximum quality, maximum profit.

No wonder that guy got his first go a skirting done bang on what an amazing way of teaching you have really surprised you don’t have more followers great work guys keep it liked and subscribed

Top class tradesmen. Great work. Not many like you about.

As a new diy-er that tutorial was as easy to understand as is possible, your apprentices are very fortunate to have such attention to detail training, your a credit to your trade Robin👍

I love how you compliment ed, warms my heart

A true master carpenter and builder. Thank you Robin.

Holy moly. I’ve installed thousands of feet of trim and learned by way of mistake and inefficient bumbling, refusing inaccuracy or clumsy execution, slowly gathering strategies to get it done faster. Glad to see I arrived at some similar techniques but maaaan would this video have been useful to see 6 years ago!! And there were still many nuggets in there!! My faves: - trim router as biscuit machine - ca glue for baseboards as well (not just door frame miters) - this is massive: only mitre and cope once! Then trace the rest (I mitred and coped em all… 🙈 - using a fixed-known-size-easy-to-calculate-measurement-and-fit-test-block (needs better name😂) to suss out the joins instead of starting each one as a new solve (though I was working in very old very wobbly places where plumb is a fruit and square is a person you don’t want to hang around too long 😅…) All told I think these tips would cut my working time in half, maybe more. Damn fine video!

Awesome stuff, a really lucky, privileged lad to have such craftsman, perfectionist as a tutor 👌

Great stuff

A pleasure watching a skilled person work 👍👍

You have a great teaching style. I really enjoyed watching this video and I thought it was a refreshing take on tutorial videos that you actually showed someone on site how to do it. I felt I stood alongside him as your apprentice. It's rarely been done and a great idea. Also, really enjoyed the praise you handed out and your general positive and detail oriented style. Hope you will make many more such videos. Thanks.

The first part for only needing to cut one mitre piece is incredible 👌😁 such time saver

That’s old school that!! Nice work mate. I measure the whole house and cut all my scribes and mitres at the saw and then take it up and fit it, I’ll never go back!!!

Tradition = Scribe internal corners, mitre external corners. Then you go to some of the new build houses and see square edge skirtings with butt joints, which is absolutely outrageous and indefensible even on grounds of keeping costs to a minimum. Nice to see Ed learning to put small corners in as one and scribing up to it to help keep it tight into the corner, Great work Ed, must have a good teacher !!

Only carpenter in the whole world to biscuit joint skirting to architrave!

Really enjoy you channel and your a great teacher passing on your knowledge

Just got a load of primed skirting and architrave delivered from skirting world; excellent finish and very good prices. A great recommendation from Robin!

Used to scribe like that. Now use angle grinder like a FinishCarpentry video - don't have my own dead square walls and floors so have to work with the historical unevenness

Love mouldings going on. Make a site look finished. I cut my scribes when I'm rough cuttings to make life easier.

Forget spa days, watching you is all I need. Did my C&G Ordinary and advanced in 1979-1983, and everything was done by hand, until it was perfect them you could use chop Saws and mitre Saws. Times have changed, but your skill and precision is impeccable. One of my old course joinery tutors, was very much like you, meticulous in every detail, which was taught to all. I cannot stop recommending your channel, purely for the education aspect alone. Thanks

Pleasure to watch things being done properly. Good on you

For external angles like those in the video I set my bevel gauge on the angle, transfer this angle to some paper (or thin card) and cut it out, fold it in half and set my saw to cut that half-angle. So if the external angle was say 146 degrees then when folded the paper would give 73 degrees. It's really quick and works every time.

Brilliant as always well done to Edd 👍👍👍

Very nice job

If you need to scribe the skirting, always work to the door. That way the shadow, (gap) will not face you as you enter the room.

I usually do all my external mitres first, as they are the most difficult to get right, especially if the plaster is lumpy & bumpy & not true. If you end-up being a tiny bit short, it doesn't matter, as the internal mitre scribes hide any gaps. 🙂👍

Your lads doing well, excellent skirting.

Quality as always Robin and Ed. Reminds me of my apprenticeship. My boss was a stickler for great detail too. Keep the content coming great too watch. Cheers

Beautiful work. Well done guys. I learend lots from this video.

I glue only on Good walls and screws on wavy walls. I thought the laser measure was going to make a debut. You can remove and only small damage to plaster. For me a angle finder is a must have tool now. Great educational vid.👍

Nice to see a tradesman taking pride in his work and striving for perfection rather than the ‘that will do’ approach

Ah yes sir, the belcast that the spreads tend to leave at skirting level. Very informative video as ever.👍👍👍👍👍

This is the type of firm I’d like to work for, beautiful workmanship, clean and tidy, pride in the job at hand and working at the correct pace to achieve all of the above! They’re using great tools too! Working in Derbyshire? Hit me up

Your coping saw skills are superb, make it look very easy. Those mdf boards can scuff or snap fairly easily tbh but I can see you're well skilled. Nice work, thanks for sharing those great tips 👍🏿

I really want to express my appreciation of the time that these guys are taking - at considerable cost to themselves - to try and show people a right way of doing things. We are just finishing the 2nd fix of a barn conversion (just 6 solid oak doors and bits of trim to go). All of the trim is European oak. The c Vast majority of that is solid timber but we have used veneered mdf for, say, the uprights on the skirtings. We then finish a 200mm high piece with a 30mm X 12mm piece which is laid flat so that it juts out about 10mm and a final 20mm X 30mm piece of solid with the 30mm vertical. So it’s a 3 piece skirting in an Arts and Crafts style using veneered mdf for the main board. All installed after the hard flooring but before the rooms with carpets. I think we’ve spent £22,000 on oak - plus about £1,000 on Rubio Monocoat smoked oak finish for every single inch of the stuff. We’ve found Rubio to be great; easy to use with a finish that the client wants; expensive per litre but a little goes a long way. Having said that, we are trialling the Heidelberg hard wax oil to see if that makes as good a job but cheaper. In keeping with that A&C aesthetic, we having plinths and corner blocks. The vertical door architraves all sit on plinth blocks. That are made about 40mm higher than the finished skirting height. The headers of the doors are 3 piece and overlap in length the verticals. So, there are no mitre joints. All internal and external corners have plinth blocks. These are 25mm X 25mm x 300mm high solid oak. The deminsions mean that they are wide and higher than the finished skirting. In an internal corner, finish nails are sufficient to lobe the blocks as the skirtings effectively wedge them in anyway. On an external corner, we pocket screw the block to one side of the skirting. The aesthetic is the main reason to use corner blocks but it also does make installation much quicker although this saving is offset by the greater amount of materials used. Incidentally, all windows reveals which are 350mm deep, are also fully lined with oak with the same style of detailing. Huge amount of work but very satisfying particularly when the client tells us it has exceeded their expectations.

Great vid! I've been watching for a while and this is my fave 😀

Wish this had been out a couple of years ago. Had to do my own when joiner took COVID rules to heart and wouldn't come in. First issue was architraves, my batch purchase of standard MDF ones were too narrow for the fire door frames. So now got two sizes ... Struggled with profiling using coping saw; your technique is better, quicker and easier. I have since removed some sections, for better furniture fit. Used only foam to fix, so can be removed with a bread knife. Just one (old) wall with bowing needed pins too. Amateur but I'm the client, so can accept my own imperfections. I know it's not a DIY guide, but still learnt a lot. Thanks.

Great vid as always

Always knock the snots off! Great stuff.

I'd love to see more tutorials on fitting skirting on old skimmed walls, for selfish reasons as this is what I have in my house and it certainly seems more challenging than nice newly built flat straight walls with a full length timber stud bottom plate to fix to. I've been trying my hand at this the past couple weeks and I'm really happy with the end result if I say so myself. It's far from perfect but the structure makes it really difficult at some points, bowed walls, humped floors, areas where I have nothing but a half inch of plaster to contact on the wall ... but the finish is better than the so called "Joiner" who fitted the first couple of rooms for me, who made no attempt to scribe corners, fill gaps, ensure things were straight or carry out any works to the existing structure to leave a good finish... and it's all due to videos from creators like Robin and some helpful advice from lads with expertise on a couple of forums. What's more I've found I actually love working with wood... wish I discovered this in my early days like Ed there, could have a very different career a path.

Finally… A video on installing skirting board that doesn’t use caulking. As you so, rightly said, if you do the job properly, there shouldn’t be any gaps. However, 99% of videos on RU-vid regarding installing skirting board don’t actually do the job properly. Then they have to run around after the fact and caulk every single board that they’ve laid - as f that’s a standard part of the process … But it’s only because they haven’t done the job properly in the first place and they need to mask all the mistakes.

Not a gap in sight. Great job lads

When people put skirting on top of wood flooring, ie laminate etc, I wish more people would put a half a mm packer/shim under the skirting to raise it off the floor by half a mm. The reason for this is... when you come to paint the room in future, Its so easy to slide some lining paper, or any paper under the skirting, which makes painting it much easier and quicker, without the need to tape anything off. Makes the painting job in future very easy. especially if your painting it more than once using undercoat and top coat. But i see so many people just sit it directly on the floor, It wouldnt add any time to the fitting of the skirting. But it would greatly help anyone painting it just to leave a minute gap under the skirting.

Excellent work Sir🥃🥃

First off, love your videos - you explain things sooooo well so please don't change your style! I learnt my skills old school style. Being taught how to cut skirting boards by measuring pieces then cutting with hand tools and I'm very interested to see how things are being done today. Why would anyone want to change their skirtings & possible architrave? Two reasons for me. First is we bought a new build and we absolutely hate it. Fitted with Torus skirting throughout and it's horrible. Total dust magnet and pain in the arse to paint. I was going to rip it all out and replace with bullnose instead. That's reason one. Reason two is why we're no longer going to replace all this lot is because we're moving into a 1960s bungalow. It's got bullnose skirting everywhere but the problem this time is it's far too low at around 60mm so it's all coming up. Just thought of a third reason as well - I'm putting laminate flooring down and as I don't like that horrid beading I'm doing it properly and lifting the skirting boards. Just weighing up the cost of buying primed bullnose MDF or buying lengths of pine and running it on the router myself - I know I've got to knot and prime it first. I quite like the idea of a subtle bullnose instead of a massive curve from the top. The only issue here is scribing would be a delicate job and as for the architrave, I'd probably route both sides and make a jig for stopping the right distance away where the skirting would butt against it. Just noticed I've not subscribed yet - now I have!

Your the best of the best in carpentry very skilled master .

Two things I do when building is mark the studs on the floor so I can nail up high on the skirting board , and next to walls and doors I nail a block on the bottom plate which helps in pulling it up tight as I can nail the top

Great video. When i was taught i was told to put the adhesive on in small circles, it apparently causes suction and holds better.

Holy shit, you must charge a fortune🤯, hats off to you for a outstanding finish, I could do it In a fraction of the time and have the same finish as your self

Very fascinating! True professionals👍

Super work.

It’s great to see you use hand tools 👍

Wow what a quality job. Fair play for such a great video on how to do a job properly. I’ll cut corners no doubt. 😂

Great video!

Only Robin could drag out a video for 30 minutes on fitting skirting boards

That was brilliant. I learned so much. Thank you.

High levels of workmanship.

Here in the states, we typically use door casings that are a tad thicker so the skirting just creates a nice detail without having to try to make them flush with biscuits. In fact, this is the first time I've seen biscuits being used for this purpose.

Superb video and thorough demonstration! It's been difficult here where I am in the States to find younger people to get into these trades. Wonderful how you give back to those that want to learn there where you live and all of us fans here on your wonderful channel. Hope this week is a glorious one for all of you and thanks again Robin!

Thanks Robin Cleverest, I mean Clevett !! Our house in Fla US was built in 1926 .. we found dozens of whiskey bottles under it (houses on stilts don't ya know) ..... not a square joint anywhere.... I know because I stripped it, inside AND out .... the bathroom door was noticeably well beyond where it should have closed but hadn't yet, lol... BUT.... there wasn't a gap anywhere EITHER ! ... unbelievable really. I appreciate your efforts to educate because at some point, hopefully through self betterment, folks will actually "build back better"

Being this man's apprentice would've been an honour

Lining on paper on the floor. Nice trick. Obvious once you see it done! If the opportunity presents itself, I’d like to see how you treat a three-piece bullnose corner. Lots of those in mid-century modern around here. (Your hand-saw technique is a joy to watch.)

Hi robin , what MDF skirting brand are they ? Your Craftsmanship & carpentry knowledge and yrs of experience is So valuable.

Absolute class

I DIY’d my skirting and architraves into a renovation last year. There was a lot of F’ing and Jeff’ing…. I wish I had of seen this video first hahahaha

Nice work Robin (as always) sadly most of us do not have the luxury of having a craftsman like yourself in front of them!

I also use the same place to get my skirtings and arch’s. I like to personally buy a thicker architrave. Firstly because I like the look but secondly to to offset the plastering/lining issues. Great job as always guys. Very impressed with the big chap. Pretty sure my skirting didn’t look like that at first.

that lamello jointer would be a slight upgrade on my 10 year old aldi special like.. if ive got to join skirts on a long run i always go with 22.5 degrees to join them. see loads of times people go with a 45 degree cut to join 2 lengths together but ive found 22.5 looks much neater

Great inspiration will be redoing skirtings on next painting redecorating planned maintenance. Thanks for the tips and tricks. KC

Beautiful