skirting board / paint walls which first? General decorating topics, questions and answers. find help, tips and advice on completing your decorating projects

[Liffeymoon]

Firstly, sorry if this question has already been answered, but I can't find how to search through existing topics!

The room being decorated used to have (very fetching) dado-height pine panelling on every wall, which has now been removed. As such there is no existing skirting board and hence we’ve got to fit new skirting board as part of our decorating endeavour. The skirting is going to be very plain, just planks of wood essentially, rather than anything fancy or moulded. In addition we’ve also removed the architrave from around the doors which also needs to be replaced. Both the skirting and architrave will be painted white.

Anyway, my question is – what do we do first? Paint the walls or fit the skirting/architrave?

Also should we paint the skirting and architrave before fitting it?

I’m really, really confused as we’ve been getting very mixed information on this topic from friends and family.

We are also putting a new floor down, which will be put down before the skirting, I don’t know if that makes any difference to the order we should do things though.

Any help would be MASSIVELY appreciated, as at the moment I don’t know what to do next.

Thanks,
Liffey

[Dan the man]

I would undercoat all the timber first a couple of times, then fit Arc then skirt then gloss the timber then paint walls.

Thats what I'd do anyway.

[acsimpson]

I think that the mixed advice is because there is no one way to do it.

I would always gloss the wood work last so that any drips from painting the walls wont be left on them. I would also often paint the walls first then do the floor and finally the attach the woodwork. That way you can roll the walls without worrying about the edges. Of course when you come to attach the woodwork you will need to do a reasonable amount of touching up which all takes longer, I guess this is why the pros don't do it this way.

In my experience you do end up with a much nicer finish and far fewer brush marks which is important to me.

[paul the paint]

hi liffey, if you are using timber as opposed to mdf, buy some "knotting", this comes in a small bottle either from a diy store or your local paint supplier, dab this on all knots in your wood as this will stop the resin "leaking" which will give you brown marks on your finished timber after a few months. secondly give it a good rub down with a fine grade sandpaper and then coat with wood primer, once dry [you can use an acrylic fast drying one] give it another light sand. i would then lay the floor before you fit the skirting and architrave which will save you cutting flooring to length and moulding the floor around the architrave. once this is done get yourself a tube of "painters mate" and a skeleton gun and gun the gaps in along the top of the skirting and around the architrave [not too thick,cut you nozzle to suit] and either run a wet finger over the top or use a wet brush. then undercoat the timber and again rub down lightly once dry and then paint your walls first, try not to smear the wall paint all over the timber but a little is ok and then finally paint your top coat [gloss/egshell] on the timber. one word of good advise, please splash [excuse the pun] out on a good set of paintbrushes for all your painting work, believe me you wont regret it as these will serve you for years if you clean them properly. good luck, if you need any other help, send me a message.