I've recently renovated my kitchen, which amongst a great many other things involved putting in new skirting boards, which needed painting.

So, to protect our new timber floor we decided to slide A4 paper into the very small gap between the skirting and floor and then paint. This seemed to work well, except that now the paint has dried it appears that if I pull the a4 paper out, it may take the paint off the skirtings with it (it's white silk, dulux trade vinyl paint).

Do any of you have any tips to remove this with minimal damage to the new paint? I've thought I could just very carefully go around the edge with a scalpel?

Thanks in anticipation.