- Hey, everybody. Welcome
back to the channel. Skirt boards are one of those things that really intimidate a
lot of young carpenters or anyone starting out, but they're not that difficult. So in this video, I'm gonna
do this staircase here. I'm gonna show you how to
lay out your skirt boards, how to find the angles and cut them. This is how I do it. It's probably a lot different than a lot of old school carpenters do it, but I think it's definitely
the most efficient and best, most accurate way to do it for me. So hopefully, you enjoy the
video and learn something. As you go to start your skirt boards, one of the first question
is you're gonna have, or things you're gonna have to decide is how much the offset should be between the nosing of your tread and the top of the skirt board. So real easy trick. Use
your level as the offset. This Stabila level is 2 3/8 wide. So all I do is lay my level
across the top of the treads. Then I take my pencil and
mark across the top of that and that's gonna be the
top of my skirt board. Now, the next thing that really
intimidates a lot of people is how to find the
angle of the skirt board to make your cuts. The old school method would be to drop the skirt board in
place, tack it to the wall, and then you can use your
level to mark perfectly plumb, and that's gonna give you a pencil line. It's not gonna give you a number to cut, but you're gonna be able
to discern that angle using your saw or protractor,
however you would do that. I've honestly never done it that way. I've always had a digital level available. So I take the easy route. I take a long level, lay it
across the top of my trends. I hit the button on my digital level, (level beeps) set it on top, and my angle is 37. Now there are two angles
that you need to know whenever you're cutting your skirt board. One is the plumb cut. The other is the horizontal cut. The number that this level
spits out, this 37 degrees, which it says right now, that is actually your plumb cut. So whenever I need to cut
the vertical plumb cut, my cut angle's gonna be 37 degrees. The horizontal cut, to find that number, you take 90 minus 37, and it's gonna be 53 degrees on that horizontal cut
because 37 plus 53 equals 90. I believe that's called
the complimentary angle or supplementary angle. It's been a while since
I was in geometry class, but you get the idea. Now it is a good idea, especially on single flights of stairs that'll go up straight the
whole way to another level. You're gonna have skirt boards that are 16 feet plus long. So I like to chalk a line on those just to ensure that I'm running straight and I can get a more accurate angle. I've actually seen a stairs
that had a big old dip in them and that'll throw everything
off if you're not careful. So it's a good practice
to chalk align for that. I like to use my Shinwa chalk line with this Shinwa chalk line you can just poke the end
onto your pencil line, (chalk line snaps) and then snap it. It's not necessary on
short runs like this, but on longer runs, I definitely recommend chalking a line. At this point, we know
the angle of the stairs and I have the top of
the skirt board marked on all of these walls representing where the top of the skirt
board will land on the wall. Now I need to figure out what my transition points are gonna be. That's a little bit tricky and it's something that is
not always black and white. On this particular house, the baseboard that we're
putting in this house is a flat baseboard with
an eased edge on top. So that's gonna make this really easy. All I want to happen is
I want my skirt boards to flow into the baseboard. So to do that, I want my baseboard height, as I come across here, to match up with an intersecting point where my baseboard comes down. So I'm gonna take this line down until it intersects with
the top of my baseboard, and that is gonna be the
end of my skirt board. That's gonna be where I'm
gonna make my plumb cut. One other note, I want to make the skirt board to
baseboard transition flow as much as possible. And my skirt board is gonna be
traditional one by material, which is 3/4 of an inch thick. The baseboard in this house
is 5/8 of an inch thick. So I'm actually gonna
switch up the material and I'm gonna use a one by six for my baseboard on this area. That way I can match up the
thickness of my baseboard with the thickness of the skirt board and it'll sand out in and it'll
look like it's all one piece and flow really nicely. Now to mark this point right here, where my baseboard will come across and intersect with my skirt board, my baseboard is gonna be 5 1/2 inches, and I wanna keep it up
3/8 of an inch for carpet. So I want 5 7/8. So I'm simply gonna bring
my tape measure across here until I see that 5 7/8 point intersect with this
plane of the skirt board and I'm just gonna make a
plumb line just like that. And that's all I need. After I've made my mark here, I need something to
hook my tape measure to. So I'm gonna take a, (hammer pounding) I'm gonna take a 10-penny finish nail and put it on the inside
of those two lines. That way I can hook my tape on this. So now I'll simply hook
my tape onto that nail and I measure 96 3/8. I'm just gonna write that here where it'll get covered up. Now I need to make a
diagram of this skirt board so that I can take it to the saw and cut. For that, I'm not a
good drawer. I'm sorry. 96 3/8. That's gonna represent my
point from the tip here to the tip here. I know my baseboard is
gonna be 5 1/2 inches, so that's really easy. That's all I need measurement-wise
to cut this skirt board. I'm gonna go ahead and write
up here, 37, and circle it so that I know that is my
angle that I'm cutting this at. (saw whirring) (saw whirring) (saw whirring) (tool whirring) (tool whirring) (tool whirring) (nail gun thumping) Little progress update. You got the skirts and
base along this side. As you can see, I used
two number 10 biscuits and pinch dogs to pull
that joint nice and tight. That way the skirt board
flows into that base. Come around here, same thing. There's two biscuits and a
pinch dog pulling that tight and I'll come back and sand those later. I do wanna point something out. So skirt boards like this,
it's very basic and simple just to take measurements and cut those and they should fit perfectly. Everything is perfectly lined
up with the pencil lines that I initially had. It can get a little
trickier though, at times, whenever you have a skirt board that's coming in to a mitered section. So I wanted to show you this here. I've got this skirt
board just set in place, with my marks, and I
need to mark this miter. What I did is I went ahead and
I cut this a little bit long. And what I'm gonna do now
is just take my pencil and in mark that miter, because sometimes it won't be quite plumb and different things. The other situation is if I took this plane all the way down and tried to wrap this around,
it would actually be too low. It would be below my 5 1/2 inch baseboard. So what I'm gonna have to
do is actually drop it down. So I'm gonna mark right here, also. And on this, I'm gonna cut down to the top of where my 5 1/2 inch mark
is, and then bring it over. And then I can transition
this all the way around and go down with this piece of baseboard. So sometimes I will set the
pieces in place and mark, but not often. Alrighty. So here we go.
We're all finished up. Putting stair skirt boards
in is never perfect. There's always weird stuff like this that you have to deal with, but this'll all get carpeted
and it'll be all right. Coming up here, you just make
the best of what you're given. This skirt board was notched over here. That way it could stay on the same plane. Continue around at the one
by six pinch dog, biscuits, working away around here. Again, same level, up, down, around. Now some guys may disagree with
how I handled this up here. I also could have level cut
the skirt board right here and brought this base around a few inches. You can do it either way.
I do do it either way. It's gonna be a matter
of personal preference. I kind of like this better because this is gonna come off and there'll be a LVT bullnose
that'll get put on here. And it's gonna be a lot easier for the flooring guy to undercut this and terminate that bullnose
into this skirt board, I feel like, so. You can do it however you want. Same thing coming around here. This was a little bit tricky down here. Drop my level down. That way I could meet
the base and carry on across and down. I cannot recommend this
Stabila digital level enough. It has paid for itself
many times over for me. And the reason I'm big on
doing skirt boards this way is because I don't have
to cut a skirt board, bring it here, mark it in
place, then take it back. That's adding footsteps. By just being able to
mark points on the wall, take measurements, I can do all the cutting
at the saw most of the time and then just bring it
and drop it in place. So it's very accurate. It's very efficient and
works really well for me. You do definitely wanna make sure you make your connections with biscuits because these connections here will break and crack. You have an ugly crack
line if you don't do that. Another thing that I do
is sand the skirt boards. A lot of times the delivery
guys drag them across the truck. They get scratches and whatnot. So I always have my sander
here underneath the saw. And if you use a Festool sander like this, this is the 150/5. It's got the five millimeter stroke. So with that five millimeter stroke and 120 grit sandpaper, it takes all the chatter and whatnot, gouges, scratches off of the skirt board and just leaves a much nicer product. So that's something I
recommend doing also. Well, I do hope you
guys enjoyed this video. Just a quick little tutorial. I've been wanting to do
something on skirt boards for quite a while. See my stairs playlist. I've got a playlist on my
homepage for my YouTube channel, with a lot of different
videos on stair construction. If you're trying to learn, there'll be other helpful videos there. So thanks for watching and
we'll see you on the next video.
