Finishing edges of wood flooring

[huw169]

I am going to put engineered wood flooring down on top of a suspended wood floor.
The issue is that who ever fitted the skirting boards years ago sat them on the floor. They are painted white.
If I fit wood flooring, how can I finish the edges to the skirting??
Do I need to pull all the skirting and refit over the wood flooring? (That would be a pain )
Thanks for your help.

 

[WoodYouLike]

If skirtingboards are in situ we leave an expansion gap in front of them which is covered by a flat solid Oak beading 5 x 26mm

 

[Chri5]

I thought fitting the edging to the floor (which could move) may cause problems.

ie shrinking moves it away from skirt and will show a gap, expansion will push the edging hard against the skirt and deform the edging or break the pin nail fixing between edging and floor ?

Maybe I have it wrong, but isn't that the reason why bead, quadrant, edging should be pin fixed to the skirt to allow the floor to expand or contract freely ?

 

[WoodYouLike]

You use tiny pins to pin the beading down on the floor - if the floor starts to expand the movement will lift the beading up, giving you also an 'early warning' system there is movement.
When the floor shrinks you do indeed see a little gap between beading and skirting, easy to fix.

In all the years we have been using flat beading we only had to go back in 3 cases to pin beading down again where it has lifted due to expansion or re fit them due to shrinkage. All cases involved solid floorboards, we never have to re pin beading when we installed wood-engineered floors.

A flat beading looks much nicer than scotias or quandrants (and so say our clients )

 

[huw169]

Thanks fellas.

WoodYouLike - can you point me to any pictures that might show this?
It sounds just like what I want to do.

Do you do this in front of room thresholds as well? And what about the edges of the architrave (sp?) where you are going around a bit of a corner?

I've got a lot to learn before I do my own. Got 75sqm to do - 5 rooms and a hall with angled doors. Need to make as meany mistakes in my head before I start laying..
Thanks for the help.
Huw

 

[Chri5]

Since most rooms only have architrave around doors it's standard to cut the architrave wood at floor and fit the new flooring under it.

If your looking at 10mm expansion, cut 15mm away and have 5mm of the new flooring under leaving 10mm of space for the expansion.

 

[WoodYouLike]

Tried to find some images that does show the beading, but that's turning into a kind of: victim of their own success - you can hardly notice them

In front of high enough existing thresholds we do the same, but architraves (especially here in the UK with all the tiddlybits) we don't. We normally undercut these and a part of the doorpost to slide the floor underneath.

We have various wood-guides/manuals available if you like to learn more - even some tricks of the trade

 

[huw169]

Thanks fellas - really good advice there.
Really appreciate it.
Huw

 

[huw169]

I have another question....

In the kitchen, I will have units on all 3 sides. Do you just put the flooring just under the units? This would save me a good few quid in flooring and mean that I can crack on with the kitchen earlier.

I supose I need to use the snap lock stuff throughout then. (Think I just answered my own question.....)

Thanks
Huw

 

[WoodYouLike]

We install normal T&G boards in kitchen the same way you describe - just going underneath the units and cutting the kickboards to new size.
No need for horrible clicksystems - just glue the T&G correctly.

 

[huw169]

Thanks agian WoodYouLike.
Sound advice. I'll probably buy the book when I am at that point in the build.
Many thanks
Huw