How to fill the gap between skirting board and new vinyl floor?

[Laurens]

We have just had new Luxury Vinyl Planks glued down which left a 3mm gap in some areas between the skirting board and the new flooring.

I am looking for suggestions on how best to handle the situation.

I have watched some YouTube clips to see how some people handled the job but would appreciate local knowledge..Large gap under skirting board

[JacobZ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Laurens,

Thank you for your question about fixing gaps beneath skirting boards.

The best solution to this problem is to pull the skirting boards off and reattach them closer to the floor. Trim carpenters will often scribe the skirting board against the floor and cut it to get a nice tight fit that accounts for any undulations on the floor. Looking at your photo, the gap looks fairly consistent so you might not need to do this, but it is the way to get the best results possible.

You could also attach 18 x 18mm 5.4m Moulding White Pine FJ Primed Quad to cover the gap between the floor and the skirting board. The downside to doing this is that you would need to attach quad to all the skirting around your property for uniformity.

It's generally not a good idea to use a filler product on the bottom of skirting boards as floors tend to experience a lot of movement, meaning the filler product will crack and degrade prematurely. With this being said, if you are comfortable with this fact, you can use gap filler rod and no more gaps.

Let me know what you think and if you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Jacob
 

[Laurens]

Thank you..

I cant remove the skirting board as it is glued to the wall in many places and would do too much damage to the plasterboard and paintwork. One of my projects was to install LED lights through the skirting board to use as nighttime lighting. That involved removing the skirting board and later using 'no more nails' to put them back.

I will pop into Bunnings today to have a look at the smaller pine quad, maybe even bring a small sample home to see if it passes muster.