Cement Board Skirting for the Clueless Mobile Home Owner

That's skirting, Tim...

Abraham Maslow is credited with the saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." We like that, not least because we feel as though the Antisocial Network has plenty of tools that aren't hammers. We mean that in both the metaphorical and literal senses, by the way... Unfortunately, some freelancers have just a hammer... eHow.com's Tim Anderson is one such writer, a guy who has only one arrow in his quiver as he deftly proved in the HomeSteady post, "How to Do Cement Board Skirting."

The staffer who turned this one up immediately thought of the skirting placed between the frame of a mobile home and the ground. She'll readily admit that she wasn't aware that "skirting" is (in some places) a synonym for a baseboard. Anderson, though, drew on his deep knowledge of the topic – he claims "more than 15 years as a third-generation tile and stone contractor" – to inform his readers, counter-intuitively, that,

"Skirts are vertical sections of cement board used to create a cement-based substrate for the thinset mortar to adhere to when installing your tile or stone."

See what we mean about hammers and nails? Tim saw "cement board" and automatically assumed the question was about tile work, then forced a fit by pretending that "skirting" is terminology related  to mounting tile on walls. His narrow focus ignores the common use of the term "cement board" to mean exterior siding such as HardieBoard®, DuraSkirt®, and FauxPanels®. That is the point of the OQ's question, not tiling a wall!

Meanwhile, back at the content farm, Anderson prattled endlessly about how to install cement board, but apparently his "expertise" only went so far. For instance, Tim said nothing about leaving a space between cement board panels (manufacturers' instructions differ, but 1/8" is fairly standard) and nothing about filling the gaps with thinset and fiberglass mesh tape. Not only does he get the purpose wrong, his instructions are questionable. Classic Dumbass of the Day work, if you ask us.

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