Skirting, cornice and architrave in Nairobi

Trim is the cheapest joinery in a house and the most visible. Nobody looks at skirting directly, and everybody notices a gap at a mitre or a run that lifts off the wall halfway along.

The numbers here are interesting for a different reason. skirting is searched 1,900 times a month in Kenya at an advertising competition index of 53, and architrave 480 times at an index of 9, which is close to uncontested. For a page this cheap to build, that is one of the better openings on this site. It is also, at roughly KES 20,000 a job, the lowest value per lead we do, which is exactly why it sits below the staircases and the partitioning in our build order rather than above them.

Skirting, cornice, architrave: which is which

Skirting runs along the base of a wall, covering the junction with the floor and taking the knocks from furniture, mops and feet.

Cornice runs along the top, covering the junction between wall and ceiling. In older Nairobi houses this is often a run plaster moulding rather than timber, and repairing it is a plasterer’s job rather than ours; we will say so rather than replace an original moulding with a timber approximation.

Architrave frames a door or window opening, covering the junction between frame and wall. It is the piece that makes a door look finished, and it is the piece most often left off entirely on a new build.

Corners are never ninety degrees

This is the whole craft of trim work, and it is why a fitted result looks different from a DIY one.

A mitre cut at forty-five degrees only closes if the corner is exactly ninety. Nairobi corners are not: in newer block work they are close, and in older stone houses they can be two or three degrees out, which opens a visible wedge at the top of a skirting mitre.

The answer is to measure the actual angle and cut to half of it, corner by corner. On internal corners, scribing one piece to the profile of the other is better still, because it stays closed when the timber moves. It is slower and it is the reason good trim work stays shut through a dry season.

Timber or MDF

MDF is the better material for painted trim, and most trim is painted. It has no grain to raise through the paint, it stays dead flat, and it machines to a crisp profile. Its weakness is water, so it is wrong for a bathroom skirting or anywhere that gets mopped hard, and every cut end wants sealing before it goes on the wall.

Timber is right where the trim is to be stained or clear-finished, where it has to match existing hardwood in an older house, or where it will get wet. It costs more and it moves, so it is fitted with that movement in mind.

Height and proportion

The commonest aesthetic mistake is skirting that is too short. A room with a three-metre ceiling and a 70mm skirting looks unfinished, because the proportions of the trim should relate to the height of the room. Older Nairobi houses generally had generous skirting for exactly this reason, and replacing it with modern stock height makes a good room look cheaper.

If you are matching existing profiles in a period house, we can have a cutter ground to the original section. That is worth doing on a room you care about and not worth doing on a corridor.

When it is worth doing on its own

Rarely, and honestly. Trim is cheapest as part of something else: while a floor is being sanded, while a room is being painted, while doors are being replaced. A team already on site with a saw set up costs a fraction of a separate visit for forty metres of skirting.