Renovation project - Skirting boards

Renovation project - Skirting boards

Many houses in France do not have skirting boards, you may think that this is not a problem and skirting boards are only there for decorative purposes, but this is not true.

A skirting board along the bottom of your wall will help to solve many problems, the main one being rising damp.

If the plaster is touching the floor you are very likely to have a problem with damp on that particular wall, as there is nowhere for the wall too breathe. Also if you have a tiled floor and the wet mop touches the plastered wall this can develop problems

The easiest solution is to remove the bottom couple of inches of plaster so that you can see the actual wall. As we do this the smell of damp is so strong, it will take a couple of days for this bit of wall to dry out properly.

We will then make our own skirting boards as this is a lot cheaper and more attractive than shop bought ones.

If you are going to use floor covering, having a skirting board will give you a good finish to where your floor covering meets the wall (this can make life much easier for you).

The next post will show you how to make the skirting boards from floor boards