Skirting & Architraves In Caulfield

Skirting is priced per linear metre supplied and installed, and the rate depends mostly on material and height. Primed MDF in a standard 67mm or 92mm profile is the cheapest, primed pine sits above it, and solid timber or a custom-run heritage profile costs a multiple of both. Architraves are priced per door or window set rather than per metre, and a set is usually a similar order of cost to a couple of metres of skirting. Across an average three-bedroom house, replacing all skirting and architraves generally lands in the low-to-mid thousands for MDF and considerably more for solid timber or matched heritage profiles. Removal and disposal of the old trim, and making good the wall behind it, are separate lines we itemise rather than bury.

A standard three-bedroom house takes about three to five days for skirting and architraves, and that surprises people because it looks like a quick job. It is not, because almost every wall in an older Melbourne home is slightly out of square, and doing it properly means scribing rather than gapping. Painting is on top of that and is usually a separate trade unless you are having pre-primed material installed and touched up. A single room is normally a day. We give you a working-day estimate at quote and we do not leave a house half-trimmed over a weekend.

Yes, and on a heritage home it is the whole job. Interwar and Edwardian houses across Elsternwick, Armadale, Ormond and Malvern East typically have deeper skirting and distinctive profiles that no modern stock board matches, and fitting a modern square-set board next to an original lambs tongue looks wrong immediately. We take a profile off an existing length, source the closest match, and where nothing matches we have a profile custom run. It costs more and it is the difference between a repair that disappears and one that announces itself in every photograph of the room.

We start by measuring and setting out, working out where joins will fall so they land in the least visible places rather than in the middle of the wall you look at from the sofa. Material is brought on site and left to acclimatise before it goes up, because trim installed straight off a cold truck into a heated house will shrink and open its joints. Internal corners are scribed, external corners mitred and glued, and lengths joined with a scarf rather than a butt so the join does not open up. Everything is fixed into framing where possible, brad-nailed and punched, and we fill nail holes and caulk the top edge ready for the painter. Offcuts and dust leave with us.

Three reasons, and only one of them is workmanship. The first is timber movement, which happens when trim was installed without acclimatising and then dried out in a heated house. The second is house movement, and across the reactive clay soils common in Bentleigh, Glen Iris and Malvern East a wall that shifts seasonally will open a mitre no matter how well it was cut. The third is butt joints and gap-filled internal corners, which look fine on day one and open on day one hundred, and that one is avoidable with scribes and scarf joints. We build in the first two and eliminate the third.

MDF is the sensible default for a painted finish in a modern house: it is stable, cheap, takes paint beautifully and comes in every profile, and its only real weakness is that it swells badly if it ever gets wet, so keep it out of bathrooms and laundries. Primed pine costs more and handles the odd splash better. Solid timber is what you want if the trim is being stained or clear-finished, or if you are matching original work in a period home. On profile, square-set and simple bevelled boards suit contemporary interiors, while colonial, bullnose and lambs tongue belong on period homes, and the safest rule in an older house is to match what is already there rather than introducing a second style.