Making and Installing the Crown Molding

Welcome back to the kitchen! This time I am doing the crown, which will take care of basically the rest of the trim in the three rooms: the kitchen, the pantry, and the breakfast nook. 

This was my second time making crown, and I made some changes after my first experience making crown for the sunroom. Last time I used Donavan’s Williams and Hussey to do the entire crown. This time I used the table saw as much as possible to make it go faster. 

The spring angle on the crown is 42 degrees, so the blade on the table saw is tipped to 42. Last time I used the two piece back cutter set to make this cut, and while that machine is very versatile, it is almost a point of weakness for me. Because it’s an open platform, you have to make all of your own work holding pieces, which makes for a lot of set-up and trial and error. The set-up on the table saw is just a lot more convenient, at least for the back cuts. 

The second back cut, which will go against the ceiling, is 48 degrees. To make that cut, I had to run the board vertically over the table saw. This was the one that I wasn’t too sure I could do easily with the table saw, but fortunately it worked really well. 

With the two back cuts done, I moved on to the face cut. When I used the molder last time, the knives were so big that they protruded below the feed rollers. That meant that I couldn’t take a small pass on the first cut, so I had to run the molder painfully slowly. This time I’m using the dado stack to bulk out a bunch of the waste out of the cove, which will make working with the molder easier, because there is less material for the crown knives to remove. 

With all the prep work done, I loaded the knives on the molding machine and set it to run the profile. The first cut went a lot more smoothly because I bulked away the majority of that waste on the table saw first. 

Now that I have the crown all made and painted, it’s time for install. I’m going to put in the biggest pieces, but first I have to deal with a problem here, which is an issue that I have known about for a while. When I measured to make the uppers, I discovered that the ceiling is not flat, so I have this weird job in the ceiling that I’ll have to deal with. There’s a little bit of a bow in this piece of crown, but you can see that there is a gap over on the right end. 

There’s a couple of different options to fix or hide that error with the ceiling. What I decided to do is hide the error in the cove by changing the profile of the crown slightly. This cove is so big and it’s a big arch, so you won’t really notice that it changes from one side of the room to the other. I’m also going to hide some of the error by showing more of the cabinetry and roll the crown a little bit, so the crown will be a little bit twisted over that run. 

But to reduce my pile of crown and make me feel like I’ve accomplished something before going off on that side tangent, I’m going to install the crown on some of the less difficult spots. 

I also installed the crown in the pantry in further efforts to avoid dealing with that uneven ceiling.

Here it is sitting there with a one inch reveal like it’s supposed to have. The first thing I’m going to try is to put the side with the gap a quarter inch up and see if that taper is noticeable. 

I mean, I know it’s there obviously, but that might be ok. I’m going to tack it up, but I’m thinking it’ll work out just fine and save me a whole lot of heartache. 

And here it is: all the crown is wrapped around the kitchen! It’s ready now for the painter (i.e. me) to come through, fill and caulk and spray it all so that it is fully finished. But before I can do that, I need to make the pantry door. 

That’s going to do it for this one. Thank you as always for joining, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave your comments. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And till next time, happy woodworking!