Fitting skirting boards: cuts, corners and fixing done properly

What you need for the job

For a straightforward room you need a mitre box or a mitre saw, a fine-toothed handsaw or a jigsaw with a fine blade, a tape measure, a pencil, and a coping saw if you want properly fitted inside corners rather than mitred ones. A spirit level and a stud finder are useful if you are fixing to a plasterboard wall.

For fixing, decide in advance between clips, adhesive or nails, because each needs different preparation. Skirting clips need to be screwed to the wall first, adhesive needs a clean and reasonably flat surface, and nailing needs a wall that will actually hold a nail, which rules out most concrete and many old plastered walls.

Buy about ten per cent more skirting than your total wall length to allow for mistakes and offcuts, and buy end caps or internal corner pieces if the boards are MDF veneer rather than solid timber, since mitred veneer corners can show a pale edge where the cut exposes the core.

How to cut an accurate inside corner

The textbook approach is a 45-degree mitre cut on each board, meeting to form a right angle. It works well if both walls are genuinely square and flat, which in a new-build with plasterboard partitions they often are. Cut one board at 45 degrees in the mitre box, offer it up, then cut the second to match.

In practice, most rooms in Tallinn are not perfectly square, especially in older buildings, so the better method is coping: cut the first board square into the corner, then cut the second at 45 degrees as if for a mitre, and use a coping saw to cut along the exposed profile edge, following its curve. The coped end then sits over the face of the first board and follows the wall regardless of the actual angle.

Coping takes longer to learn than mitring but forgives a wall that is a few degrees off square, which a mitre joint will not. If the gap still shows a hairline after fitting, a flexible decorator's caulk in a matching colour closes it, and this is a normal finishing step, not a sign you did it wrong.

Cutting outside corners and joining runs

Outside corners are mitred at 45 degrees in the opposite direction to an inside corner, and here accuracy matters more because there is no coping trick to hide an error. Measure the wall length at floor level rather than at the top of the skirting, since old walls often bow slightly and the two measurements can differ by several millimetres.

Where a run of skirting is longer than a single length of board, join it with a 45-degree scarf joint rather than a square butt joint. The angled cut is far less visible once painted or once the wood grain is matched, and it holds together better if the boards move slightly with the season.

Always dry-fit every piece around the whole room before you glue or fix anything. It is much easier to trim half a millimetre off a mitre while the piece is loose than after it is stuck to the wall.

Clips, glue or nails: what suits which wall

Skirting clips are the tidiest option on plasterboard or masonry walls where you do not want visible fixings, and they let you remove the skirting later without damaging it, which is worth considering if underfloor pipework or cabling might need access. They take longer to install because each clip is screwed and plugged individually.

Adhesive, usually a gap-filling grab adhesive applied in a bead along the back of the board, is the fastest method and works well on flat concrete or plastered walls. It does not forgive an uneven surface, since the board will only sit flush where the wall is flat, leaving gaps everywhere else.

Nails, either through the face or at an angle through the top, work on timber-framed walls and stud partitions where there is something to nail into, which in a panel-block flat is often only a narrow batten or the door frame area rather than the wall itself.

A mix is common and sensible: glue for the flat lengths, a clip or two near a corner for extra support, and a nail into a stud where one happens to fall behind the board.

• Clips: best on uneven or masonry walls, removable later, slower to fit
• Adhesive: fastest, needs a genuinely flat wall, hard to remove without damage
• Nails: only where there is timber behind the board to nail into
• Combination: glue along the length, clips or nails near corners and joints

Dealing with an uneven Soviet-era wall base

Panel and brick buildings from the 1960s to 1980s rarely have a straight wall at floor level, where old plaster has bulged, been patched, or simply was never finished flush. Fixing skirting straight to a wall like this with adhesive alone tends to leave visible gaps that get worse rather than better once the caulk shrinks.

The practical fix is to pack out the low spots behind the skirting with small offcuts of the same board or with packers, so the face of the skirting runs in a straight line even though the wall behind it does not. Clips are more forgiving here than adhesive because each one can be set at a slightly different depth.

For a wall that is badly out of true over a long run, it is sometimes worth running a thin batten along the base first to give the skirting a consistent surface to sit against, rather than fighting the wall board by board. This adds a step but saves a lot of frustration on an older flat.

The most common mistake, and when to call someone

The mistake nearly everyone makes on a first attempt is cutting to the exact measured length and expecting the corner to close perfectly. Wood movement, wall irregularity and small saw errors compound, so the better habit is to cut fractionally long, offer the piece up, and trim in small amounts until the joint closes cleanly, rather than cutting once and hoping.

If the room has several corners that are visibly out of square, if the walls need packing out over most of their length, or if you find yourself refitting the same corner for the fourth time, that is the point to stop and get someone in rather than spend a weekend on one room. It is also the moment a coped joint has gone wrong in a way that shows even after caulking.

Skirting is usually the last thing fitted before or after painting, so if you are already having flooring laid or a room decorated, it is often simpler to have the same visit cover the skirting rather than book a separate day. Flooring work starts from 15 € per job and painting and decorating from 12 € per job, both quoted properly once the room and materials are known.