Skirting removal - avoiding wall damage

boots_babe

Hi,

We will be replacing all of our downstairs flooring and have been told the skirtings need removing first. We have had a careful try in a couple of places, but the skirting is causing pieces of the wall plaster to crack and come off with it in places.

My question is, if we paid a trade to do this, would they be likely to have a better technique and hence minimise the amount of wall damage? Or actually would they just have the same issues?

We certainly don't want to have to either patch up or re-plaster every single room in the house!

Many thanks.

Kiran

Put a piece of timber behind whatever you are using to pry the skirting off. That'll spread the load and avoid the plaster damage

casper_gutman

It may be impossible to remove the skirting without plaster damage. In our house the skirtings have been on for almost 100 years, and many of the walls have been skimmed at some point without removing the skirting, so the plaster butts up to the top of the skirting and removing it without damage is effectively impossible. Hopefully you'll be luckier than this!

boots_babe

Kiran said:

Put a piece of timber behind whatever you are using to pry the skirting off. That'll spread the load and avoid the plaster damage

Hi, thanks for replying. That's exactly what we were doing, and I think it helped somewhat but still we were getting chunks coming off in places :-(

EssexHebridean

We had the same in our 70 year old flat when removing skirtings I'm afraid - not an issue for us as the walls were being skimmed anyway, but would be very annoying if you'd be hoping to avoid that! 

FreeBear

casper_gutman said:

It may be impossible to remove the skirting without plaster damage. In our house the skirtings have been on for almost 100 years, and many of the walls have been skimmed at some point without removing the skirting, so the plaster butts up to the top of the skirting and removing it without damage is effectively impossible. Hopefully you'll be luckier than this!

I'm resigned to the fact that plaster will be damaged, and the wood will split beyond repair when removing skirting (and picture rail). ~100 year old plaster, and 3" floorboard nails (sometimes 2/3 in the same hole) fixing the skirting, so something has to give.

Modern builds where grab adhesive has been used, again, skirting isn't going to come off without some damage.

ButterCheese

I had that when removing from a friends house.  It had been stuck on with gripfill and nails/  The nails came out easily but the gripfill ripped chunks of plaster off.  A tradesperson would not really be able to prevent this from happening.  The other option if you don't want to re-plaster is to fit deeper skirting boards to cover up!

boots_babe

FreeBear said:

casper_gutman said:

It may be impossible to remove the skirting without plaster damage. In our house the skirtings have been on for almost 100 years, and many of the walls have been skimmed at some point without removing the skirting, so the plaster butts up to the top of the skirting and removing it without damage is effectively impossible. Hopefully you'll be luckier than this!

I'm resigned to the fact that plaster will be damaged, and the wood will split beyond repair when removing skirting (and picture rail). ~100 year old plaster, and 3" floorboard nails (sometimes 2/3 in the same hole) fixing the skirting, so something has to give.

Modern builds where grab adhesive has been used, again, skirting isn't going to come off without some damage.

It's a 200 odd year old farm house but think the skirtings were done when the last owners refurbished in 2009. We don't need to keep the skirting, we are having to remove it so as to fit new deeper skirting (as our new floor will be thinner). 

boots_babe

ButterCheese said:

I had that when removing from a friends house.  It had been stuck on with gripfill and nails/  The nails came out easily but the gripfill ripped chunks of plaster off.  A tradesperson would not really be able to prevent this from happening.  The other option if you don't want to re-plaster is to fit deeper skirting boards to cover up!

The reason we are removing the skirtings, is because our new flooring will be much thinner and so we need to get taller skirtings all through. I don't think getting them an inch or so taller again is a good idea (or even possible to that height) as it would start to look mighty odd!

Reading these replies it's sounding as though we'll just have to accept lots of patching up and repainting. We are very definitely not going to be re-plastering every single room.

pieroabcd

Hopefully your shirting boards weren't fixed with wall plugs, as it happened to some of mine.  It was absolutely insane.
And hopefully yours are not encased in the plaster, as with most of mine. , even more insane.

531063

Try running a multi tool along the top of the SB between SB and plaster