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[email protected] nothanks@aolbin.com is offline
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Default Uneven floor/skirting and kickboards

On 10/09/2019 05:41, wrote:
I've just spent half a day ****ing around with the router to get a 3m length of kitchen unit kickboard fitting reasonably tidily on a quite uneven floor. The floor doesn't look that uneven, but when you put a long, straight edge on it, lumps and hollows everywhere. The unmolested board was touching floor at each end and floating in air in the middle. Trimming the ends, the touch points of the kickboard moved to various points along its length; trim those and same again.

So, my question is: is there a better way to do it than rough measurements, followed by many iterations of fine adjustment, to get best fit? Against a hard surface (which this was), a kickboard or skirting board with completely faithful reproduction of the contours of the floor can look naff, drawing the eye to the unevenness. The trick seems to be to go some way to accommodating the ups and downs, but accepting that gaps between floor and board might be unavoidable for best overall appearance.

I'm aware of bendy profile strips that can be used to reproduce uneven surfaces, but I don't think that one of these would have helped over a 3m length.

What do pros do?

Thanks.

Bill.

It's called "scribing". Put the timber in place, propped in places if
necessary, then find a small spacer that's the size of the smallest gap.
Rest a pencil on the top of the spacer and run the spacer along the
floor so that the pencil draws the floor profile on the wood, then cut
with whatever is must appropriate (jigsaw, sander, rasp, surform,
scraper) to the line. It might take a couple of iterations but it's
possible to get a near-perfect fit if needed. If appropriate, it can be
made slightly easier to fine-tune if you put a bevel on the edge so that
only a narrow strip at the front of the wood is against the floor.
I treated myself to a Trend Easyscribe, but with care a compass will do
the same job, as will a washer.