Gap in the skirting where fireplace was removed...

[Cherry42]

Unfortunately a previous owner removed a bedroom fireplace. They boarded up the gap, but frustratingly made the plasterboard almost flush with the remaining skirting on either side. It looks so ugly.

So - what's the best way to remedy? Could I try to hack off the bottom six inches of the plasterboard and insert a similar piece of skirting or would it forever look terrible?

Is the best idea to hack off the bottom six inches, remove the skirting on either side and fit an entirely new length of skirting to run across the whole wall?

Plastboard is easy to cut through with a craft knife. Definitely remove the two bits and replace with a new bit. It isn't a difficult as it looks. It will probably be nailed in place into wooden noggins in the wall. Crow bars and hammers are the best thing to use. Be careful at the corners where it goes around the fireplace as the nails can make the wood split when you try to remove it.

Ok, thanks so much. It's a flat wall, no protruding chimney breast, so that should make it easier.

I'm guessing replacing the new strip if skirting is fairly simple to DIY, I don't need a joiner or anything?

Possible silly question - after just googling what a noggin is..! Do you mean that the walls behind the skirting board probably don't come down to the floor?? That there is just empty space behind the boards?

Probably depends on the age of the house but I have taken skirting off in Victorian and Georgian houses and both had some gaps behind the skirting. So the plaster comes down to just behind the top bit, then there is a gap then the floorboards. The noggins sort of sit in the bit where the gap is. There is wall in the gap, it just won't have been plastered right down to the floor.

I would never have realised that @Geneticsbunny. I wonder why the plasterboard/plastering wasn’t taken right down to the floor. Surely that would make it easier to affix the skirting?

Water damage prevention was one reason so if you spill water under the skirting or a slow leak is pooling at floor level it is not sucked into the plaster

Expansion gap as wood is a natural material that moves the floor and the wall should be braced and each move as one unit and if the plaster was in direct contact with both the pressure would create cracks

Ah!

Well I’ve learned a lot from this thread today, thanks all!