July, 2007

Conquering Crown Moulding

There’s a lot more to selling mouldings than just lineal footage.

By Gary Katz

A good friend of mine, Jed Dixon, likes to say that a well-designed home should start with the stairs: “Always design the stairway first. Do it correctly, with proper proportion and detailing. The rest of the house can’t fail if the stairway is right. If the stairway is wrong, the whole house will be wrong.”

While I understand Jed’s enthusiasm—after all, he’s a stair-builder from Rhode Island—I realize that it’s seldom possible for a homeowner or architect to begin with what most people consider a utilitarian feature in a home, at least until the time comes to choose balusters and railings.

The same is true with mouldings.

Having installed trim on countless custom homes and remodels, I can remember only one or two jobs that began with clients choosing their mouldings. Usually finish carpenters don’t meet a homeowner until plans are complete, or sometimes not even until the foundation is poured or the framing under way. That’s when they’re looking for a bid on the finish work, in a real hurry.

In many cases, the mouldings aren’t specified until we’re asked to bid. Helping homeowners choose their moulding package has become part of our job, along with designing the mantelpieces, coffered ceilings, doors, and countless other “significant details.”

Unfortunately, at that late stage, choices can be limited: If the hallways aren’t designed wide enough, there’s rarely room for 5- or 6-in. casing on many doors, let alone a backband. If the ceilings aren’t tall enough, or the transom windows short enough, we can’t include a picture moulding in the cornice designs. Even worse, if the FAU registers are already roughed in, we can’t install a full-size cornice.

Builders and architects should develop a moulding schedule at the outset of the design stage, if they aren’t doing it already, for the same reason that they create a window and door schedule. Why? Simple. For more than 2,000 years, attractive mouldings have been dependent on proper proportions. They still are. And a home must be designed to fit the mouldings, just as a rough opening must be sized properly for a door or window.

Proportion

We aren’t born knowing the right size for baseboard moulding. The “eye” for judging moulding proportion that most of us develop is trained by the examples we see. The best looking examples can be traced to Greek and Roman temples, the foundation for architectural proportion.

For centuries, those rules have been passed down to builders through pattern books, perhaps the most famous being Palladio’s Ten Books of Architecture. Pattern books were especially popular during the 18th and 19th centuries. Taken together, these rules, all based on breaking the orders into parts, confirm the judgments we’ve learned to make by eye.

Interior walls are based on classical columns. Baseboard represents the columns plinth or base; chair rail is the dado on a tall plinth; architrave moulding just above the capital translates into picture moulding; and the cornice on an entablature becomes crown moulding.

Break a typical 8 ft. interior wall into 20 parts and you’ll quickly discover that the crown moulding should be about 41⁄2 ins.—exactly the size that pleases our eye. That’s why you can’t install an 8-in. cornice—with 4-in. crown, a 1-in. fillet, and a 3-in. bed moulding—on an 8-ft. ceiling!

 Today homes are built with taller ceilings than they were 20 years ago—especially on the first floor. Why? It’s partly because we now install much larger mouldings.

Built-up Cornice Work

When it comes to crown moulding, the best choice isn’t always the biggest choice. Smaller mouldings, combined with wide fillets and soffits, are more effective at filling the wall-to-ceiling corner with dramatic shadows. Whether you use a simple piece of 1x2, or a piece of baseboard above and beneath the crown, the effect will be better than a single large profile. Running a second or third layer of trim doesn’t require much more time, as ladders, scaffolding, and tools are already in place.

Avoid repetition. Don’t stack two layers of crown directly on top of each other. Otherwise this is what your ceiling will look like. A cornice, or any build-up that uses multiple layers of mouldings, must have a cohesive non-repeating design; all curved profiles, especially large curved mouldings or mouldings with numerous curves, must be separated by flat fillets, both horizontal and vertical.

Installation Techniques

Use a crown jig and crown holder. Snapping lines isn’t always necessary or advisable, especially on a remodel where the walls are already painted or papered, or if there’s carpet and furniture in the room. And gauge blocks don’t work well—they only gauge the drop of the crown, and they frequently misread that dimension because of built-up drywall mud. Instead, cut a simple crown jig from a scrap of plywood. The jig doesn’t have to match the profile, it just has to be exactly the size of the crown: Cut precisely to match the projection of the crown at the ceiling and the drop of the crown on the wall. And for carpenters who like to work alone, use a crown holder to make the job easier and to speed up your work. 

Use a crown jig for built-up cornices, too, no matter how many pieces. The jig will facilitate layout, whether you’re snapping chalk lines or installing your trim to pencil marks. Position the jig against the wall and ceiling and transfer the layout marks for the bed and ceiling mouldings. Once they’re installed, place the jig on those mouldings to locate the crown moulding. Cut the jig precisely:

For a three-piece cornice, the bottom notch must match exactly with the bottom of the cornice. Cut a second notch at the bottom of the crown moulding. Cut a third notch at the top of the crown moulding. Cut a fourth notch at the top of cornice.

Pre-assemble short runs, especially over cabinets, built-ins, and mantelpieces. There’s no better way to ensure that corners are perfectly square; that spring lines don’t vary, and projections from cabinets to soffits and soffits to cabinet doors remain symmetrical. Stop fighting with bowed and irregular walls by pre-assembling all splices, too, which makes grain-matching staingrade material much easier.

Because of wood movement, always cope inside corners, no matter what type of moulding: baseboard, chair rail, bed moulding, or crown moulding. A Collins coping foot (www.collinstool.com) makes coping even the largest hardwood moulding easy and enjoyable. The joints will never open directly toward the eye, and installation time is cut dramatically.

Craftsmanship isn’t just about carpentry techniques. It’s about the big picture, starting with the design.

Help your customers choose better mouldings to improve the dramatic impact of their homes, and entice their friends to become your customers, too. While you’re at it, invest in a few simple tools and techniques that improve the installation process and you’ll soon be selling more mouldings than you ever have before.