How to fix cracks along your staircase skirting and wall - Step by step

hey what's up guys it's your man jb here and in this video we're going to be taking a look at the best way to fix and sort out this real ugly crack in the stair skirting now this is a real common issue and i've seen this a lot so don't panic your house isn't falling apart but it is ugly and we do need to fix it so stay tuned because i'm going to show you the best way to make it look 100 oh yeah so we really have got some nasty cracks going on up here as you can see particularly there look at that that's pretty bad isn't it it's not the worst i've seen got to be honest but it's not good so we've got to get it fixed right then this is the worst bit cleaning it up we've got to get all this old filler and cork out of here it's going to be quite messy there is a lot of cork in here and what somebody's done which is uh i find really annoying is when there's a crack or something like this someone will just get a load of cork and just try and put it down that crack but as you might be able to see here where it's got dirty over time it just looks a real mess where the cork hasn't been cleaned up and it's literally been left just to sit there and just scrape it off either side of the crack already so um yeah it's going to be pretty messy we're going to clean that up take it all out it's probably going to make a bit of a mess on the wall as well i've got a couple of scrapers so let's get on with it [Music] yes yeah [Music] now with this small bit done already you can get a really good idea the uh state of it and how much filling is going to be involved now what i'm not going to do which looks like was done before is put a load of cork in there that's a much too bigger gap to put cork in well i suppose you could get away with it but it's just going to be such a a real rounded finish and by the time it's painted as well the paint's got to go on top um you're not going to get a straight line between the wall and the skirting now i'm just painting the wool white and the skirting white so it doesn't matter too much but this is emulsion and this is going to be a satin wood and although the color's the same the finish won't be the same so if you go on here with satin or on here with emulsion it's not going to look great so what i want to achieve is a nice sharp corner finish i might put a little bit of cork in there but certainly not as much as was in there before [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] as you can see all that fork is out now all that filler and uh we're left with a pretty big gap so that there's some of the cork from there um this is a dry lined wall which means there is a cavity between this plasterboard and the wall behind now what you can see here is that the plasterboard has basically been fixed above the stair skirting with a rather large gap um which obviously they thought be a good idea stick a load of cork in so one of the issues we have got is putting a bit of filler in there it's just going to drop you'll mix it up put it in and even if it does stick initially it's got the you know it is likely that it is just going to drop and have to come back and do this again if this had been a brick wall then there would be no big gap there there'd be no cavity so you could quite easily go ahead and fill it with some easy feel or plaster repair something like that but because we got this large gap i'm gonna have to do something about that and it's called expanding foam so the other issue i've got here is the fact that the foam just drops into that cavity so i've really got to try and keep it tight onto the edge of the plasterboard and the timber but remember this stuff does expand so ideally i wouldn't have as much coming out here but i have to squirt it close to the edge otherwise i'm just not going to be able to feel that gap now just remember when you're applying this expanding foam it does expand to about 50 to 75 percent of the amount that you put in there so don't go crazy because it just comes out like now that that foam has gone off and it's nice and hard and dry we can start cleaning it up now i'm going to use a scraper here which is a rather sharp so um yeah either a scraper or something similar but the thing i love about this it's so sharp i can just literally slice it like this and that's going to come away like that so uh shouldn't take too long let's get cracking with that all the way up [Music] three [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i've got all the expanding foam off now which is really good and as you can see it doesn't completely fill the gap as in it's not completely flush with the wall there's quite a few gaps but that's perfect because what i can now do is fill that with some easy feel or plaster repair but just before i do that i'm just going to go over this surface here with a bit of 80 grit sandpaper just to scratch the surface of the paint and to get any last bit of expanding foam or cork that i haven't quite got off yet fantastic i've sanded all the skirts in now and that's all feeling relatively smooth and giving it a brush down so it is dust free what i'm going to do now is mix up some filler and i'm using this vitalin patching plaster pretty good stuff this dries really hard and uh really good for this kind of a job so uh yeah i'm gonna get some of that mixed up and then i can start getting it in the gap and it's gonna start looking pretty good here we go then i've got some of my glass to repair mixed up and uh start getting it in [Music] [Music] so now this is going to give me such a nice sharp finish [Music] yes [Music] cool man all the fillings done i just gotta wait for that to dry now but already it's looking pretty good and as you can see it's really filled in that gap so once that's dry i can give that sand and then i can get a little bit of paint on it before i re-caulk it fantastic the filler is now dry so i'm going to go ahead and use a bit of 120 grit sandpaper now this won't take a lot of sanding because it is already very flat to the wall but there is just a little bit of excess here and there so just the lights and get it all nice and smooth [Music] i've just finished all the sanding and without a glob on obviously having a feel down there that is absolutely superb i've got a really clean crisp edge or corner here and uh that's so good it's not going to need caulking now initially i thought i was going to put a little bit of cork in there because i wasn't sure whether the uh plaster repair was going to be absolutely you know give me this real kind of sharp corner but it has so i'm probably not going to cork it so what i need to do now is get a little bit of undercoat on there and undercoat primer and then we're good to go sorted so just check that out look how good that looks absolutely brilliant so there is absolutely no need to put any cork on that because there's just no gap and it's an absolutely perfect finished however if you did get to this stage after filling it and priming it if you do see a few small gaps here or there then now's the time well not right now because the paint's wet but once the paint's dry now is the time to cook it and you can just run a little bit of cork up there just fill in those little gaps and then you're ready to paint so all that's left to do here is to put some more emulsion on the wall up to the skirting line and sort out the woodwork up the stairs i'll save that for another day but if you want to check out a video on how to prepare skirting for painting then click right here right now and uh you can go check that out go on it's definitely worth watching i'll stick a link at the end of this video as well well i hope this video has helped and uh giving you a bit of an idea on how to sort out your stairway skirting boards because they do crack and they do need sorting go and do it right now go on if you're liking my videos and the content guys why don't you go ahead and subscribe that'll be fantastic right then i'm going to tidy up i made myself a cup of tea i'll see you real soon [Music] uh

Channel: Justin Bailly JBTV

Views: 90,495

Keywords: staircase, stair case, stringer, string, stair stringer, staircase stringer, stair string, staircase string, skirting, gap, gaps, cracks, filling, crack repair, caulk repair, repair, skirting crack, fill cracks, stairs, cracking, fix cracks, how to fix

Id: 7hq-tg-cdKs

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021