Staircases, skirting boards and trims

A floor is judged at its edges. The junction where timber meets tile, where it turns down a stair, where it dies into a doorway or a skirting board — that is where an experienced eye goes first, and it is where cheap jobs give themselves away.

We do this work as part of the flooring job rather than leaving it to another trade, which means one person is responsible for the whole result.

Staircases

Stairs are the highest-skill and highest-value part of most flooring jobs. Treads, risers and nosings have to be templated to the actual staircase — no two are square — and cut individually. A timber staircase is also a regulated element, so tread depth, riser height, going and nosing profile all have dimensional requirements under the Building Code that a floor covering must not compromise.

We cover timber tread and riser overlay to existing stairs, matching nosings, and finishing to the same coating system as the floor so the whole thing reads as one surface.

Skirting and trims

New flooring almost always means skirting decisions. Removing and refitting existing skirting gives the cleanest result and lets the floor run underneath with a proper expansion gap. Replacing it lets you upgrade the profile — heritage profiles for period homes, square-set or shadow-line for contemporary. Scotia over the existing skirting is the quick and cheap option, and we will fit it if that is what you want, but we will also tell you it is the option that looks like a compromise.

Transition trims matter more than people expect: floor-to-tile thresholds, doorway junctions, expansion joints across long runs, and stair nosings all need to be specified rather than improvised on the day.

At a glance