Studious setbacks

After the recent setbacks with the decorating of the study and having effectively taken the day off from DIY yesterday, I was determined to set to today and affix all the new skirting boards around the room. I'd already cut them all to size on Friday, all bar the final piece which presented something of a challenge.

The wall to the left of the door is an unusual shape. To allow easy access to the landing cupboard (which essentially now contains nothing but the loft ladder and will, if we ever get around to properly converting the loft, eventually be used to take the staircase) the wall is not straight. It's the shape of a hockey stick.

The original skirting board made a half-hearted attempt to follow the curve by using one long and one short piece of board joined at an angle; the space behind the shorter piece being filled and painted over. I was keen to do a better job than this and had cut several perpendicular grooves in the back of the last piece with the intention of bending it to fit. I had a vague idea that all I would need to do was soak it in hot water and the wood would bend easily to my will.

Ha! For a start the length was way too big to fit in the bath, so I ended up standing it in the bath and resting what would be the straight end against the wall. Since our dear bathroom fitters had only applied the bare minimum of paint, this resulted in a nice white scratch about 8 feet up which I'll have to paint out at some stage. Using the shower head attached to the bath taps I directed a stream of hot water over the dozen or so grooves for about ten minutes and then returned to the study with the skirting board dripping steamily over the floor.

The hot water and the cuts had precisely zero effect on the malleability of the board, which steadfastly refused to bend past about 3 degrees, with even that being accompanied by a rather worrying splitting noise. So that was where I left it on Friday. Past experience has taught me to walk away when things reach a stage like that. In my youth I would press on, trying ever wilder and more imaginative ways to achieve the desired effect, becoming ever angrier and more frustrated until eventually something would split, break, rip or bleed. No. I walked away until both I and the skirting had cooled down.

So Sunday dawned and my enthusiasm was back to its normal levels as I returned to the study (resignation coupled with a realisation that if I didn't get on with it there was a real chance we'd be eating our Christmas dinner on our knees while our twinned computers continued to occupy the dining table). Before I fitted the skirting I decided it would be a good idea to refit the power sockets. Unfortunately this revealed that the accuracy of the plastering around the sockets was less than 100%. In all but one case there were gaping holes between the plastic and the plaster. Off came the sockets again while I filled around the cavity with my trusty filler (now cutting the cap off my fourth tube in this room).

Thus prevented from realising my goal of actually fixing the skirting, I did drill and plug the holes on those lengths that would require screwing as well as gluing. In all there are five lengths that are either slightly bowed, or being fitted on walls that aren't straight, or a combination of both. In one case the wall bends one way and the board bends the other, leaving an elongated eye-shaped gap between the two. A single screw is all that's needed to bring the two halves closer together and hopefully will save me opening that fifth tube of filler.

Finally I turned my attention to the hockey-stick section. Having failed dismally with the grooving approach I decided I may as well adopt a variation of the original fitting, only with smaller pieces, so I set the mitre saw up for a 90° angle and prepared to cut loose the longer, straight section. The handle of the hockey stick. As I sat there on the floor about to make that first cut, it occurred to me there was the possibility of an alternative strategy that would take advantage of what, until now, had been a bit of a pain in the Rs. The skirting I'm using is 6-inch and my mitre saw will only make a 4¼ inch cut. So all the while I've been fitting it I've had to turn the board over, reverse the cutting angle and make that last 1¾ inches with a second cut.

But now...what if instead of just grooving the back of the board, I cut all the way through, but only down as far as the saw goes in a single cut? Wouldn't that allow the board to bend, finally? And if it didn't, what did I have to lose? The timber merchant had for some reason cut this piece much longer than required, so if this approach failed I would still have sufficient left to return to plan B. So that's what I did. And...it worked! OK, as soon as I removed my foot from the bend it sprung back out again, so I will have to screw it back against the wall, but the idea was good and the execution was also good. It just means there'll have to be more filling and sanding on the front surface of the board to hide the cuts, but since the front is on the inside of the curve the cuts will be almost completely closed, so I'm confident the final result will resemble the dog's doo-dahs.