well…looks like I’ve got to put up some crown moulding for someone, in a dining room that has got those silly rounded drywall corners. ( although they are good for families w little kids that bumps heads into the corners).
although it has been a long while since I have worked with crown and have not done much of it, I am comfortable with the task…except for the round corners.
The base was done with double 22.5 degree to make up the angle. a few years back I recall seing this pointed out in FHB as the wrong way to do this type of corner; the correct way being to use a special rounded piece for the corners. (in fact I just moved from a house that had corners done in this manner.)
But what about crown in this situation. I believe that I will have to go with double angle method simply because the base was done that way. But what is the proper way. and any advice I should know before dealing with these corners.
Replies
I don't know why the 22.5 cuts would be wrong, I would prefer them over the store bought pieces.
If the base is that way, do it with the crown..no problems
yeah I've concluded that I should go with angles simple because the base is done that way.
Agreed. But how do you handle the gaps that result?
I imagine, in the old days, when the crown was plaster, they just followed the curve.
Now, you can use a flex molding for a larger radius.
I hate those rounded corners. ;)
Jake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
yes, that I beleive was the point. with the angles, you are left with either a visible gap or it must be filled with calking. ( while calking has it's place, it was never intended in fine homebuilding to be a replacement for wood.)
I beleive I will be stuck with calking it.
There are several options, and I wish I had some time now for discussion. I've seen small wooden inserts installed in the little void between crown and corner. It takes some finesse, but can be done efficiently and safely.
Also, one could create custom larger outside corner blocks that the crown runs could be butted into. Design sky is the limit, so a chance to get imaginitive.
Hopefully someone can pick up from here.
I get paid to do carpentry. That makes me a professional.
If I work on my own house does that make me a DIY?
yeah.. actually something like that crossed my mind. never used em or seen em up close, only in photos and with regular corners only. but something like that could be real nice.
When I do moldings around a radius I usually do them in 9 pieces with 8 joints between them. A long piece leading in, 7 smaller pieces, and a long piece leading out.
8 miters, 16 cuts, about 5 1/2 degrees for each. The variable is how wide to make each of the seven smaller pieces so that when assembled it matches the radius at hand.
I glue them all together on the bench, let it dry, then lightly sand over the profile to feather out the lines of the miters.
If it needs it I'll put a light skim coat of spackle over the piece and resand when dry.
I've gotten very good, long lasting results with this...Buic
Buic
I'm no fan of those radiused corners but I've always just did the double 22.5° thing.
I'd like to see one of yours, gotta pic?
Doug
Sorry, I never took a pic of it. I've been saying to myself for years I ought to do that now and then with my work.
I'll see what I can do about making one at work on Monday.... then I'll have to figure out how to post a pic ! LOL
As someone else noted, cut small pieces off of long ones.
Leave the blade down till it stops and most small pieces won't get thrown. The teeth on the way up do a lot of the throwing.
Stand a scrape of 1x against the fence so it's on both sides of the blade before you cut and it'll keep a small piece from flying too.
I sometimes have to make more then one sample corner assembly to find just the right combination of angle, size of piece, and number of pieces for a particular profile so that it turns the corner smoothly. But the one I described is often right or close.
Buic
I'd love to see that too. I won't attempt that simply because of the base. but that would be cool to try down the road.
I'd like to see a picture, too.
And tell us how you cut those pieces - they would be pretty small.
"Citius, Altius, Fortius"
small fingers.... lol
actually, I wouldn't consider that part hard...cutting small pieces is easy as long as you keep cutting from a long piece. it's when you try to cut a small piece from a small piece that it gets dangerous.
Yes to cutting from longer pieces.
What about the shrapnel when the saw blade catches a small piece and rockets it in all directions at once? LOL
"Citius, Altius, Fortius"
yes...sometimes I'll be cutting that small piece - next I'll be ...where did it go?!
I find it helps to ease off the trigger just before the cut is finished so that blade slows as the cut completes. usually that works, but sometimes I still have to hunt for the piece or cut the same piece more than once.
Well that's unique I'll give ya that. I too would like to see a picture, but it seems like a lot of work for a simple solution. I always do what Hooker said. I make the bottom inserts out of wood or you can fill it with structural epoxy if you have it.
I suppose if you're doing a stained crown your technique might be good.
Someone, very skilled on a lathe could make those outside corners for you.
I've seen a couple of nifty ways to go around corners, and I think you could dredge up some photos from Gary Katz's website, or the JLC forum he runs.
Or, you could get the plastic corner pieces from Norco and use them:
http://www.norcodrywall.com
try again,
From GAry Katz website.
3 thumb nails on this page of the before
http://forums.jlconline.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=8&page=3
And the finished product (BEAUTIFUL)
http://forums.jlconline.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=8&pos=10
Edited 4/1/2006 10:33 pm ET by butch
Edited 4/1/2006 10:35 pm ET by butch
Edited 4/1/2006 10:39 pm ET by butch
Edited 4/1/2006 10:40 pm ET by butch
that looks like it is proper...the corner thingamabobs that david links to also look cool. both better than the double mitre....to me at least.
I only edited that reply about 4times Did you see the 3 befores of the crown?
lol...I hate when that happens.
and no actually ..I'll have to go back and check it..I only saw the final
Beautiful work but I'd be curious to see what it looks like after a year or two of seasonal change.
I've done something similar to that to make a complete moulding.
I've also done it that way with stock mouldings. Always made a fine crack at the plaster joint after seasonal movement of the trim. Maybe I did it wrong somehow, but every single joint would get a fine crack.
"Let's get crack-a-lackin" --- Adam Carolla
I had occasion to do a very large cove that was part wood molding, part plaster--the molding went around the wall and around the ceiling (2 different pieces), the plaster formed the cove, filling in the space between the moldings. The plasterer used expanded metal lath, a base coat of structolite, and a drywall knife he ground to shape for a finish coat of Diamond Finish. We didn't have any problems with that one, but I can see what you mean about the butt joints in that photo. It does look sweet, though.
I can picture it in my head. A nice detail on the wall and ceiling with the cove between -- a cornice. I much prefer cornice to crown. Especially nice big cornice. One day I'll do that in my own house.
For now, the budget and free time limits me to Outwater (plastic cornice trim -- looks pretty good painted though). Even that stuff has gotten pricey in the last couple years. Every time my neighbor asks how things are coming along with the house I just tell her it's like the shoemaker's children. Makes her crack up. ;-)
"Let's get crack-a-lackin" --- Adam Carolla
Edited 4/2/2006 12:54 am ET by philarenewal
Our house usually looks great from the outside--new foundation, new sidewall shingles, new paint, new roof going on at the moment. Got that part done so that anyone driving past thinks I must be an OK contractor.
Inside is a demo project underway for the last three years. I've taken a lot out and put nothing back yet. Hopefully within 2 years I can scrape up the dough to remodel the kitchen and bath, sand the floors, redo a bunch of the sheetrock, etc. In the meantime I'd be embarrassed if you came over.
I'm always in the midle of a project.
A number of years ago, we were doing a job locally. The client told about a conversation with a friend about who was doing the work. The friend said something about driving by a house every day that's taking forever to finish, and why'd you hire those guys.
My client told her friend that it was my house she was driving by, and then told me about the conversation, rather amused.
It did encourage me to finish up a few things.
"Inside is a demo project underway for the last three years. I've taken a lot out and put nothing back yet. Hopefully within 2 years I can scrape up the dough to remodel the kitchen and bath, sand the floors, redo a bunch of the sheetrock, etc. In the meantime I'd be embarrassed if you came over"
THANKYOU for saying that, LOL. I am in the same boat, except the outside of my house is a mess too. Iwas probably a bit optimistic on the timeframe that it would take to jack up the third floor, LOLJake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
I'm trying to be logical about what I do and when I do it. The first project here was to raise the place and put in a concrete foundation. The logical extension of that was to re-side the exterior. Then of course we had to paint. I thought I'd go 4-for-4 and get the roof done too.
Now, inside the house, the foundation work required some demo. I had to remove two brick chimneys. We decided to remove a wall and replace with a beam in the attic. We made some window changes. We rewired quite a bit a repiped completely. Added a propane heating stove and a tankless heater.
In the course of all of this I have continued to demo sheetrock and insulation. However, to really complete the deal I need to redo the kitchen. Once I've demo'd the existing I'll be in a position to finish the rewiring, replace the insulation, and get the sheetrock done.
It WILL happen.
Here's a pic of my place
I love a job that looks like that... because I know I can get a debris box, hump all that stuff out of there, demo all the little pieces and the nails, get some lights strung up, and turn it into a productive jobsite. You're definitely committed, though.
One thing I've found is that getting help makes a big difference. I have a friend who is building his own house at the moment, and we've been trading days of work. The two of us get more done in a day than either of us working alone for two, plus we blast the music and talk trash all day, which adds to the ambience.
What's that brick in the corner? I want to say chimney but it looks like it might be a column?
I suppose we've hijacked this thread unreasonably. My bad, won't let it happen again.
Hijack...I suppose, but how much more was there to say about bullnose and crown?I think the thread was really loosing momentum...We're keeping it alive, albeit in a warped fashion. OK this is a hijack. <G>The brick is a column put in to support a steel beam used to support the second floor when the Inn was moved to make way for a highway in the '30's. There was a brick chimney there originally. The Old Inn was moved just 50 feet back away from the new roadway and placed on a new foundation.I used an arch to hide the beam.
Now, that second picture doesn't look nearly so desperate. Door, trim, finished floor, etc. Like real living space.
Did you do the moving and the foundation?
No Great Depression Public Works of some kind I think.
alrightythen,
Don't let anyone tell you there is a right or wrong way to do it unless they can come up with some super rare " How to Trim a house with round corners" rule book.
If the base is done with the 22 1/2% pieces then do the crown that way. It's actually very common. I can' tell you how many times I would go measure a house and the builder would say not word one about round corners, even if I asked. And then, show up to trim it and find round corners.
Not much thought usually goes into trimming it until the trimmer actually shows up. That's probably why the 22 1/2% piece is so common.
If you take few minutes to exeriment with different break points for the small piece on the corner, you can get it down to the point where there is only a very small space at the joints where the corner is round but the trim makes a hard corner. Small enough that you can caulk it.
Also, once you get that down, make a sample corner. You can use it to mark the break point. Then run your crown on the long sides but leave it just tacked near the corner. Cut and fit the corner piece and move it around until it looks good then nail the whole thing up.
The Corner piece is gonna be small. PUR makes a glue gun and different set time glues that are awsome. Might set you back $120 with the glue. If you have a lot of this to do it will pay for itself in no time flat. Once verything is positioned, you glue it up, set it in place, apply a little pressue and it's done.
Thanks for the tips ....they are well received
I do my crown the same way I do my baseboard by setting my mitersaw to 15 degrees and cutting 4 segments. I then hot glue the pieces together and I have a radiused corner. With a few pieces of scrap material with a 15 degree miter on them, I adjust them to find the tangent points and mark the wall lightly. That will give you the short point for the cuts.
I like the sounds of your method. I'd like to see what it looks like. unless you got some photos, I may do a mock up.
I think I'll have to stick with the 22.5 'cuz of the base.
But there's more than one way to skin a cat...and it sure is nice when you know them.
Edited 4/2/2006 1:00 pm ET by alrightythen
I need to go back to retrieve a ladder so I'll get some pictures. This house was a bear as the homeowner wanted crown that ran up the rakes and through a stairwell that had "Random angled" walls which also pitched up and around round corners...did I mention it was a two piece moulding? I ended up building some decorative boxes for the corners as there wasn't any way for me to figure out how to make miters work in the rake wall/verticle wall. I did my segmented corners on the flats and around a column.Re-reading my previous post I made an error. I make only 2 small pieces of crown with the 15 degree angles on them, the adjoining trim gets the other 15 degrees on them. (6x15=90 degrees)
that does sound like a bear. did you make some good money? how do you charge for a job like that?
I don't think I'm at that level yet as I'm a framer recently turned 1st time house builder. Done a bit of trim in the past, as the crew I learned from did trim on the odd occasion. But this has been my 1st time trimming a whole house solo. I did an arts and crafts style ripping all the stock myself from sheet goods of MDF. I am very happy with the results and I was able to impress the heck out of my wife :)
The crown I gotta do is for my landscaper, we are trading services and his wife wants her dining room to have a more formal look. soon as I saw the corners I said ugh!
Edited 4/2/2006 3:43 pm ET by alrightythen
I work for a GC and he charged time and materials. I actually started out as a cabinetmaker and progressed backwards into trim work and then into framing. Kind of a good thing as I always paid attention to details and worked to closer tolerances. As I frame now, I am always aware of what size trim will be used and I add blocking for crown as required. Heck, I even throw blocking in the kitchen walls to help out the cabinet installer and blocking in batroom walls if I know there will be grab bars installed.
I started with framing..but with high end homes, and it was required to put in the extra blocking when we did the backframing. So that is what I learned and thought was normal, 'til I learned that not everybody does that.
I was lucky to learn from that kinda crew... the guys who followed us always gave kudos to the framers, when speaking to the builder.
I've done a few of these, easy way is caulk,better way especially if the crown is stain grade is to make a filler. I think the radius is 2" if I recall.Bore a 2" hole in a piece of 3/4" stock.Cut the piece with 90° at the front,the hole matches the round bead.Use super glue to fasten to the plaster bead at the correct height.When gluing the miter ,dab a bit of glue on the filler.I make enough of these fillers to do the entire run of crown,plus a few extra in case I need them.Takes maybe 30 minutes to make a few dozen.Use a gap filling super glue, its thicker and doesn't soak in the bead so easily as the regular stuff. Years ago we actually used hot hide glue,before the fast setting glues were common.I'm old enough to remember plaster walls were common ,with round plaster beads.
mike
How much are you charging for the work?
High end home - I would expect turned corners not 22.5 degree miters.
I'm not charging a thing. He's my landscaper, I've done work for him in the past. But right now he is giving me free use of all his machines..mini dumps and mini excavators...so we are exchanging services.
and regardless..the guy they had do their base already did 22.5 which I suppose they are fine with, so unless they want to change all the base corners, makes sense to have crown look the same.
>>"High end home - I would expect turned corners not 22.5 degree miters.
Glad somebody said so. Thought I've been taking crazy pills by accident from the first I heard of cutting the corner with a 22.5 mitre years ago and said to myself "blah, yuck."
Cut it square and add a filler or make it round. Otherwise, just "cutting corners." ;-)
"Let's get crack-a-lackin" --- Adam Carolla