crown molding

Shame on us. We haven’t shared a trim tutorial in quite some time. What were we thinking? Obviously, we weren’t. How would you like to see our master bedroom and bathroom trim?

Let’s get started. We (well, Ben) started with 4 foot by 8 foot MDF sheets. One that is 3/4 inches thick and another that is 1 inch thick. He cut tons of 2 inch wide strips, several 3 and 5 inch wide pieces out of the 3/4 sheet. Then, he cut 1 1/2 inch wide pieces from the 1 inch thick MDF sheet.

To start, we installed the 5 inch baseboard around the perimeter of the room. Then, we started placing the 2 inch wide verticals, placing one centered on each wall. From there, the verticals have 12 inches of wall space before the next edge. The horizontals are also spaced 12 inches from edge to edge. With the grid in place, we added the three-inch wide top rail, capped off with a 1 1/2 inch deep by 1 inch thick piece, to finish it off.

Now, onto the tricky parts, the doors and windows. Ben had the idea to install lights above each window and door in our master bedroom.

Door and window casement starts out the same as the rest. Rather than a piece of casement at the top, we’ve added three trim pieces. First, a piece of 1 inch thick MDF, cut into strips and routered for a decorative edge. Then, a piece of 3/4 inch thick MDF cut into 6 1/2 inch widths. The tricky part was cutting the crown to fit against walls; both doors nearly touch the wall. For Ben, the easiest way to tackle this obstacle was cutting, gluing, and nailing the crown to the flat trim, leaving a 4 1/2 inch reveal. After the glue had set, Ben cut the pieces to size, installing the whole piece over the routered rail.

The lights tuck neatly inside the crown, glowing at night.

That concludes our current home’s trim treatments. Anything else you want to know before closing day?

As I mentioned yesterday, we spent most of our weekend relaxing, but we did slide a little kitchen work in there. Ben installed the crown moulding in the kitchen on Saturday. We didn’t want to pull the good crown from the dining room, so Ben cut a small piece to fill the gap between the old crown and the new cabinet. Then he wrapped around to cover the cabinet:

Remember the gap above the marble back splash? Before Ben could put crown up, he nailed a filler strip in place.

Then tacked the trim to the filler strip, keeping it flush with the ceiling while covering the gap and a little more of the marble tile.

See how nice that finishes the tile off and makes everything seamless? Love it! (And, that’s a peek at the grouted back splash).

To match the other cabinet, we wrapped the trim around the upper cabinets.

For some reason, the small back entrance and stairwell never got crown moulding.

Problem solved. After a few coats of the same blue paint from the stairs and dining room, everything will flow together.

One of the reasons we chose the vent hood we have is because we wanted the rest of the kitchen to shine. To make the fan as un-noticeable as possible, we agreed (after some debating) to carry the same trim around the vent hood.

I considered adding different trim and painting the box white, something kind of like this.

But Ben persisted that this was the best way to go. I have to say, I agree. White paint on the trim and blue in the middle will give this side a splash of color, too.

Now we need to caulk the cracks and joints, sand everything smooth and slap some primer/paint combo and we’re done. With the trim.

What kind of vent hood do you have (or like)? Sleek stainless? Painted white?

P.S. I used my new camera to take these pictures. On my desktop, the pictures look fine, but on my laptop, a strange gradation/solarized thing happens. Is anyone else seeing this?

P.P.S. A few more readers took the survey (thank you!!) and I got a few requests to share some Photoshop action. Consider a post in the works! Oh, and to the surveyor(?) looking for bookshelf decorating, check out this post, or this one, this one, and this one.