How do I refix a skirting board that has come away from the wall?

Skirting comes away because whatever it was fixed to has moved, shrunk or was never there. Grab adhesive on a dot-and-dab wall, or nails into old dry grounds, are the two usual explanations.

What you'll need

• A detector
• Screws and plugs, or long screws for studs
• A drill and a countersink bit
• Grab adhesive
• Decorator's caulk
• Fine filler and abrasive paper

Step by step

1. Find where it is loose.Push along the length. The failure is usually a short section rather than the whole run, and it is nearly always at the top edge that the gap shows.
2. Work out what is behind.Timber grounds on an old wall, studs on a partition, dot and dab over block, or solid masonry. Each needs a different fixing and this is the decision that matters.
3. Ease it away carefully.A bolster with a scrap of ply against the wall to spread the load. Score the paint lines first at the top and at the floor.
4. Check what failed.Rusted nails, rotten grounds, adhesive that has released from a dusty wall, or nothing behind it at all. That tells you what to do.
5. Scan for cables and pipes.Sockets are usually just above skirting height and their cables drop down behind it. Central heating pipes frequently run in the void behind skirting on ground floors.
6. Refix into studs or grounds with screws.Countersunk screws every 400–600mm and within 100mm of each end. Screws pull the board tight and stay tight in a way nails never do.
7. Plug into masonry.Drill through the skirting into the block or brick, plug, and screw. Take care not to hit the mortar joints, which hold less well.
8. Use adhesive plus screws on dot and dab.Grab adhesive alone on a dabbed wall usually holds only to the board face. Screws through into the block behind, plus adhesive, is the reliable combination.
9. Pack behind a bowed section.Where the wall is hollow, a packer behind the skirting at the fixing point stops the screw pulling the board into a curve.
10. Countersink and fill.Set the heads below the surface, fill with fine filler, sand flush and touch in the paint.
11. Caulk the top edge, not fill it.That joint moves. Flexible decorator's caulk in a small bead, tooled with a wet finger, and painted once cured.
12. Deal with the floor gap separately.Below the skirting, a gap to the floor is a draught route on a suspended floor. Caulk, quadrant or beading, depending on how big it is.

Tips

• Screws rather than nails is the single change that makes this a permanent repair. Nails work loose as the building moves; screws do not.
• A skirting board that has come away everywhere on one wall is often on a wall that has been dot-and-dabbed, where nothing but the board face was ever holding it.
• Score the paint lines before easing the skirting away. It saves a lot of plaster damage at the top edge.

Common mistakes

• Filling the gap at the top with rigid filler — The wall and the skirting move relative to each other with the seasons and with the building's own movement. Rigid filler cannot accommodate it and cracks along its whole length, which looks worse than the original gap.
• Relying on grab adhesive alone on a dot and dab wall — The adhesive bonds to the paper face of the plasterboard, which is itself only glued to the block at intervals. Any load pulls the paper off the board, so the skirting comes away with a strip of plasterboard attached.

If it doesn't work

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