Alternative to Silicon Wood Filler for Door Frame

[Bells36]

We're very nearly at the end of a very tiresome refurb of our downstairs area. As you can see from the photos, our builder has used Silicon wood filler where the floor meets the door-frame and his reasoning is that any hard (setting type) wood filler would crack as you go through a year with the changes in humidity as the floor moves.

I think it looks horrendous and I'm not happy with it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what can make it look better?

 

[Notch7]

I wonder if the scotia trim should be take off and a longer one put on that has a little mitred return. A bit of the torus architrave will need cutting back to scribe to the scotia. Unfortunately flooring or laminate never looks that good if the skirtings arent removed since the scotia always has this problem where it meest the architraves. I wouldve taken off the skirting

The obvious immediate answer is that the oak flooring would normally run under the architrave, but it isnt always possible to actually get under if the board goes to the other side of the room.

 

[KenGMac]

Retro-fit an Architrave base block? that would take care of the Architrave.

 

[Leofric]

Yes plinth blocks ,thicker than the skirtings ,to architraves (skirtings but up to side of plinth blocks).

 

[crank39]

Plinth blocks now otherwise rip the floor up and undercut the architrave and door frame and slide the laminate further under, any decent floor fitter would do this, is this the first floor your builder has ever fitted, he hasn't even returned the mitre at the end of the beading, poor quality install in my opinion

 

[Bells36]

Unfortunately ripping up the floor isn’t possible as this would leave us with much bigger problems. The floor was put down, then a carpenter bought in to do the scotia trim and build the doorframe so they were done by different people (neither of whom seem to have realised we’d be left with these gaps).

Getting plinth blocks fitted seems to be the nicest fix as it would hopefully look nice without looking like a bodge.

How would you go about fitting plinth blocks without having to remove the doorframe, skirting board and scotia trim?

Removing them, filling them and repainting would mean so much more mess (and judging by the paint marks and trodden in filler elsewhere in our nice new floor, any major work would only result in more of this despite repeated requests to be careful).

 

[Notch7]

Unfortunately ripping up the floor isn’t possible as this would leave us with much bigger problems. In short, we shouldn’t have used this guy, lesson learnt! The floor was put down, then a carpenter bought in to do the scotia trim and build the doorframe so they were done by different people (neither of whom seem to have realised we’d be left with these gaps).

Getting plinth blocks fitted seems to be the nicest fix as it would hopefully look nice without looking like a bodge.

How would you go about fitting plinth blocks without having to remove the doorframe, skirting board and scotia trim?

Removing them, filling them and repainting would mean so much more mess (and judging by the paint marks and trodden in filler elsewhere in our nice new floor, any major work would only result in more of this despite repeated requests to be careful).

Careful use of a multi tool would sort it.

A plinth block is an option -probably a block with chamfers on it would work.

I think whoever did the floor, carried the line of the boards along from where they stop under the scotia and forgot the architrave was set back further. Or the archs were added later......

 

[Bells36]

Yes the architrave/doorframe was built after the floor was fitted (by only a few days) but it wasn’t unexpected so should have been taken into account when the floor went down.

Ok so they would need to cut the architrave out at the bottom to the same or slightly higher height of the skirting board and essentially that bit replaced with a plinth block which would butt up to the remaining architrave, skirting and scotia trim?

 

[Leofric]

Plinth blocks higher than skirting ,at least 150mm high ,projecting 20mm past outside of architrave , chamfered on front top and side edges.
Measure your skirting ,architrave and moulding and draw a sketch to scale or full size showing how you want it to look.