October, 2006

In Depth: Make More Money on Moldings

After decades of minimalism in molding design, beautiful moldings are back, and suppliers are learning there’s money to be made in wood moldings with great profiles.

By Gary Katz

Back in the mid-1980s, my brother and I were growing tired of installing 1 1/2-in. clamshell casing, and 2 1/2-in. streamline baseboard. As finish contractors, after we’d installed the doors and windows, that’s all we did on every job, day after day. By then we’d nailed off miles of small trim in thousands of apartments and hundreds of single-family homes. The market was starting to soften up about that time, and one of the contractors we worked for needed an edge against other spec builders in the same subdivision. We suggested upgrading the moldings in one of his homes. Not the whole house, mind you, only the first floor. We told him we’d do it for our cost, just to prove a point.

We installed 3 1/4-in. casing on all the first-floor doors—the entry, dining and living room passageways; the kitchen and powder bath doorways. And we installed 5 1/4-in. baseboard everywhere downstairs. That house stood apart from all the others and it sold quickly.

On the next job we installed some crown molding, just in the entryway. By then, realizing that moldings meant quality to his buyers, the contractor was on board. Before long we were installing crown in the living room and dining room; in the kitchen, hallway and even the powder bath. These days we install crown molding in almost every room of every house we work in, along with coffered ceilings in the dining and living rooms, wainscoting paneling from the entry through to the kitchen, elliptical crown in ceiling soffits, paneled archways, etc. I always wondered why we weren’t doing that type of work all along.

Moldings make a home, home

The simple truth is that moldings add warmth and character to a home; they provide a sense of comfort and "order” to a home. In fact, all of the moldings that finish carpenters install owe their origin to the Classical Orders. What’s an order? An order is nothing more than a post and a beam, like a patio cover supported by a 6x6-in. post and a 6x12-in. beam; or a header and the studs that support it. The Classical Orders are nothing more than posts and beams designed a few thousand years ago by the Greeks (with some Egyptian influence), then borrowed and modified by the Romans.

But before the Second World War, a wave of new European architectural styles swept across America. Reacting against Victorian excess, architects in America, especially academic architects, adopted the new International Style, where molding was not only discouraged, it was derided. Every house looked just like the house before it: concrete, glass and steel. Today the International Style continues to influence American architecture, with sometimes magnificent results. But modernism isn’t for everyone. Though traditional homes have returned to "ordered” design, the most significant and lasting influence of the International Style has been the degradation of the moldings we use.

As moldings were reintroduced between the 1950s and the 1970s, the "purism” of the International Style, also called minimalism, resulted in the use of thin, narrow casings, like 5/8-in. x 1 1/2-in. clamshell, and thin 2 1/2-in. streamline baseboard. After several decades of non-use and misuse, manufacturers, builders and architects had lost the history of molding design and usage. Rather than use moldings to decorate a home and draw attention to structural form, moldings were thought of as a way to hide joints and seams. And they were designed to be as invisible as possible. That’s what minimalism was all about. These thin narrow profiles were made to blend in with the wall, rather than emphasize the doorways and windows; the floors and ceilings they surrounded.

Fortunately for finish carpenters and molding suppliers, in the last few decades moldings have experienced a rebirth. Now sales teams, builders and installers have a lot to re-learn. What makes one molding more dramatic than another? What combinations of moldings work and what combinations don’t?

What Makes a Good-Looking Molding?

I’ve watched customers choose moldings for their homes. Most often they’re attracted to the largest pieces or the most ornate, whether it’s casing, baseboard or crown. The sad truth is that most of those gaudy profiles disappear once they’re on the wall; they turn into mush. That’s because a lot of moldings, especially big ones, don’t follow the basic rules of successful design.

Fine moldings are the result of fine details: crisply cut edges, deeply cut incisions, so that each curve and fillet almost jumps off the composition. Notice how the edges around the egg-and-dart molding in the Cliveden mantelpiece are all sharp and clean, the carving deep, so that the shadows around each detail are well defined—thin dark lines of shadow. The same is true in the simple crown molding on the mantelshelf and the chair rail that terminates against the architrave just beneath the crossette corner.

Studying Moldings

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we can learn the most about moldings by studying the millwork of historic homes. Many books are useful, too, but for real information on molding design, you have to look for a book that precedes any influence by the International Style.

In The Theory of Moldings (1926), C. Howard Walker offers an excellent explanation of molding design and use. Walker writes at the very outset of his book:

Walker’s point is simple: Strips of sharp-edged square stock make nice moldings but they’re boring without curved profiles. But the curved profiles must be separated by flat fillets and sharp-edge terminations, otherwise the curves "slur” into each other. Ironically, for the last few decades, sharp-edge molding and millwork have been demonized.

When I was a teenager, my father used to drop me off on a job site, hand me a few sheets of 180 and 220 sandpaper and tell me to "ease all the edges on the cabinets and doors, and on the baseboard and casing. Otherwise the paint won’t stick!” He actually believed that sharp edges won’t hold paint. That’s a false rumor, probably spread by modernists! But that’s not the only reason that today’s moldings, in opposition to Walker’s advice, have so many eased edges. As Bill Shaw, a custom-molding millwright for more than 20 years (www.copemaster.com), put it, "Sharp crisp edges and profiles are harder to cut for several reasons,” he said in an interview. "First, it takes more time to sharpen the knives. In order to get a sharp edge you have to have a very square edge on your grinding wheel—it must be dressed to a point. And the wheel must be redressed as it breaks down, which happens with greater frequency when cutting sharp-edged moldings.

"Second,” he continued, "the section of the knife that forms the point or sharp edge heats up more quickly, so the knife must be sharpened more frequently, and the molding can’t be cut at the same rate of speed. We typically ran moldings with radius edges at 30 ft. per minute [fpm], but sharp-edge profiles had to be run much slower, at 20 fpm or even less. The speed is also affected by tear out, which is a problem at sharp intersections, requiring an even slower rate of feed.”

Shaw helps us better understand the real cause of molding design degradation—a combination of economic and stylistic influences. As moldings were reintroduced, manufacturers were glad to follow the rules of minimalism, in fact they preferred to ease edges for faster production.

Why Combine Moldings?

As I mentioned earlier, some clients mistakenly choose the largest moldings available, ones with the most profiles. But if the profiles aren’t separated by fillets, then they don’t create identifiable interest. Instead, avoid busy patterns and create variety and interest in molding installation by combining simple profiles separated by wide fillets. The result is a molding of significant size, yet with the separation necessary to create depth and interest in each profile.

Many moldings adapt themselves well to build ups. WindsorOne (www.WindsorOne.com) adds an ogee door-stop pattern to the top and bottom of its Colonial Revival crown molding, which creates an emphatic cove, more than 7-in. deep. The striking beauty of WindsorOne’s Colonial Revival and Classical Craftsman patterns is achieved through the use of a picture molding, about six in. below the crown (on higher ceilings the picture molding can be even lower!). Be sure to paint the wall space above the picture molding the same color as the moldings, so that the entire "combination” will resemble an entablature.

Sure, installing a two- or three-piece crown pattern requires more labor, but the second time around the room is much faster than the first time: The scaffolding or ladders are already set up, the saw is right there. And frequently the measurements are almost identical. You can always make more profit on per/ft. labor for installing the second and third layer of molding.

If you’re courageous and attempt to combine your own molding patterns, remember one rule that C. Howard Walker states empathically: "In all structures there is an acknowledgement of the law of gravitation which concedes that the lower part of a vertical structure should apparently be thoroughly capable of supporting the upper part,” so never put a heavy bed molding on the ceiling, and keep your dentil blocks down low.

Making Money on Moldings

Not far from my home are two stores that sell moldings—one of them sells nothing but moldings; the other recently started selling windows, doors and hardware, too, so they could serve their finish contractors better. Though both stores specialize in moldings, they don’t sell small stuff. You won’t find any 1 1/2-in. casing in their racks, and they don’t stock any mdf moldings either. For one simple reason: though the markup is high on moldings—40-60%—the gross profit isn’t, especially on inexpensive profiles. The money in finish material is made at the high end: larger wood moldings with great profiles that have a higher price point. In that market, with a 50% markup, you can make real dollars on moldings.

And if your yard has an installed sales program, that’s where the real profit lies. Installation prices for high-end moldings are at a record level. The highest earners are companies with reputations for craftsmanship and quality, with crews that are organized, neat and clean, who get in and get out quickly and completely. Developing or improving your molding sales and installed sales programs can have tremendous benefits, whether your yard serves the new construction or the remodeling market. The first step in improving molding profits is upgrading the quality of the products you sell. From the lessons provided in this article, yard sales teams should have an easier time upgrading their customers, and explaining the difference between cheap moldings and quality profiles.

In future articles, I’ll cover specific ways to improve molding installations—quality, productivity and profits.

-GARY KATZ, with nearly 40 years experience in the industry, is a contributing editor to Fine Homebuilding magazine, a frequent contributor to the Journal of Light Construction, and produces the Katz Roadshow—Carpentry Clinics at lumberyards all over America. To learn more, visit: www.GaryMKatz.com/KatzRoadshow.htm. All photographs are by the author.