Crown Moulding

Al Carrell: The crowning touch in a special room may be this decorative border that covers the edge where the walls and ceiling meet. It's called crown molding and it's usually made out of wood. But these days it can also be made out of many other materials and it can be matched to your favorite wall treatment. Moulding - you're probably wondering is it do-it-yourself? Well sure, it can be. First thing you need to do is to be comfortable using some very minor tools - a hammer, a saw, things like that. This is the kind of electric saw contractors use. If you can rent one it's going to make your job a lot easier, but you can also use an inexpensive miter box and hand saw. You'll also need the following items: two-inch nails, a hammer or nail gun, wood glue and the moulding. When you get ready to pick out the moulding you got a lot of choices. For example, you can get moulding in different widths. You can also get moulding that can either be painted or stained. Pine is the most widely used and the least expensive wood moulding. You'll probably want to paint it to hide the flaws. You can stain hardwoods to show off their beautiful grain, but hardwood is more expensive. And there are other mouldings made out of pressed wood materials, plaster or plastic. They come in all sorts of patterns and sizes. As a matter of fact, they even have moulding that you can use to wrap around corners. How much should you buy? Contractor Guy Cavasos has a super handy way of figuring that out.

Guy Cavasos: Now, this is a 100 inch stick that I've cut and this will help me measure the moulding on the ceiling up here. I know it's 100 inches, so that would make it 137 and three-eighths.

AC: Guy measures all the walls in the room the same way. He adds us the lengths and then buys 10% more moulding to make sure he has enough.

GC: And that's an easy way for one person to measure this moulding without having to have two people and it's a very accurate way.

AC: Now comes the hard part - cutting the moulding so the pieces fit together. Even professionals get confused and cut corners angled in the wrong direction. So here's a tip: use two small sample pieces of the moulding that are already cut. Fit them together in the corner, note the angle of the cut and mark the place on the wall where the bottom of the moulding should hit. Be careful, moulding fits different on inside corners than on outside corners. After you fitted the samples to the corners, use them as patterns to mark the angles that you're going to cut on the moulding you plan to install. Then, head for your saw. You should have already drawn a line on the miter box to show the height of the moulding. Use that to position the moulding, note the angle to be cut and then saw away. Well okay Guy, let's go ahead and get this thing put together.

Guy: Okay.

AC: Now, if you've measured and cut correctly, the moulding should stretch from corner to corner.

GC: I can just dab a little glue on the end here.

AC: To keeps the joints from popping loose put a little glue on the moulding where it fits together. Use a block and a hammer if you need to nudge the moulding into place. Now, you're ready to drive some nails. Remember, you're gonna try to hit the wall studs. They're usually spaced 16 inches apart.

GC: Take and mark your studs with a stud finder, then you can find your studs all the way down through here. I recommend a nail gun just because it's easier to get in there and you don't want to mark up your ceiling with your hands and everything as far as hammering.

AC: You know, most people are not going to have a nail gun, but it really does make it a lot easier and you can rent one for just a few dollars. Well Guy, I think we've just about got this room whipped.

GC: Well that sounds good Al.

AC: You've been around this game for a long, long time. What do you think are the mistakes that a do-it-yourselfer is most likely to make?

GC: Well, one thing you've got to look for you want to make sure you get accurate measurements so you don't buy too much moulding. And then you want to get the right size moulding.

AC: By the right size Guy means that you want to use the eight to ten inch moulding to compliment bigger rooms. An entrance hall like this for example. Use narrower three to six inch moulding in smaller rooms. And if you're concerned about cost, here's a comparison for the most expensive item. One hundred feet of pine moulding for a small room would run about 65 bucks. The same amount of a nice hardwood would run maybe five times that much. The fancy flexible plastic moulding could set you back a whopping $700.00. You know, the addition of crown moulding and other moulding is really going to do a lot to make your house look better and also if you ever get ready to sell your house it makes it more valuable.

Episode 52 1997 - 98 Season

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