Glue or screws for fitting skirting boards?

[mahoak]

In the process of replacing the skirting boards in the house and was wondering what would be the best way to fit them with. The choice is either screws and rawplugs or glue. It's a 1950's built house and internal walls are a mixture of brick and spanish brick. Some of the walls still have the original wood wedges that were hammered between the bricks used for nailing the old boards on. However some of the walls dont have them. Any advice would be much appreciated please.

[steviejoiner74]

Screw and plugs or if you’ve a nail gun pin and grab adhesive.

[ayjay]

On Spanish bricks I wouldn't waste my time trying to screw the skirting, glue every time, unless you can find the propeller wedges.

[mahoak]

Thanks guys. It looks like a combination of the two methods might be needed. So I got some solvent free Evostick glue to use on Spanish brick walls and some screws and plugs for normal brick walls.

[Grumps]

So I got some solvent free Evostick glue to use on Spanish brick walls

I doubt that would work. Some years ago a carpet fitter gave me a tube of what they use to glue metal thresholds to concrete floors. Can't remember the name but it really worked.

The nearest product commonly available is



Just keep in mind that it is an 'expanding foam' type of adhesive so, not too much, and have battens/wedges available to brace the skirting against an opposing wall. Leave bracing in place for 24 hours.

[mahoak]

I doubt that would work.

Just to clarify, the spanish brick walls are plastered so the glue will go on the plaster and not on the bricks directly.

[Job and Knock]

Just a point about this - when I started in the 1970s we still used to carry a hatchet in our toolkit to chop our own wedges. In general we always tried to use slightly damp softwood simply because it cleaves more easily. You cut the wedges, used a "dooking" or plugging chisel and club hammer to remove the mortar from joints then hammered the wedges in with the club hammer.

For one-offs, and especially if working with existing Victorian/Edwardian skirtings or panelling, I still sometimes use wedges, albeit cut with a hand saw and knocked in with a claw hammer. You still need a means to rake-out the mortar and if you don';t have a plugging chisel a borrowed angle grinder with a stone disc works well, although it is awfully messy. The only other thing you need to do once your wedges are in place is to take a hand saw to them and saw them to the line of the (back of) the skirting boards. Once you've done done that the skirting board can pilotted and countersunk and screwed to the wedges or simply skew nailed (one or two from each direction, depending on how tall the skirting is) using thin oval nails and the heads punched under with a hammer and nail set (nail punch). Nailing leaves a far smaller hole to fill and works with both softwood and MDF skirting and if it is to be painted putty (the old fashioned stuff) makes an excellent hole filler to nail holes (and doesn't require sanding off, either, Bruumer stopping works in the same way). As a matter of interest there is one listed building in Halifax where the only way to get supports/fixings to hold window recess liners in (into rough cast stone work) was to do just this - the only modification to the traditional approach (for speed) was that the cut line was set with the aid of a laser line. The rest was done the way they did things 100 years ago and right up until the widesprerad availability of nail guns in the 1980s and 90s

[steviejoiner74]

I still had to make the propeller wedges(dooks) with an axe and use a dooking iron to chase the holes for them for my trade test in the very early 1990s. I think I still have my dooking iron somewhere and I still use my Estwing axe to this day on site for various jobs.