How To Install Flat Crown Molding

American new-home buyers accept been conditioned to settle for the stripped-down model of Abode, Sugariness Home—houses lacking in crafted item, missing, amongst other things, the gracious moldings that bring a timeless composure to any room. Primary among these is crown molding. The good news: Crown molding can be added without a big bill from the lumberyard or clouds of drywall grit.

Crown Molding Overview

There are some basic rules for installing crown molding that you tin can selection up anywhere, but the best mode to chief them is to watch a pro. When we asked Tom Silva to prove us how he puts upwardly crown, his forty years of experience became evident correct away. For one thing, he seldom picks up a tape measure, marking his cuts in place whenever possible. "Measuring leaves you open to miscalculations," he says.

He also doesn't lay the molding flat to cut it. Cut crown apartment, though it might seem easier, requires a saw that lets you lot tilt the blade (for the bevel) and rotate it (for the miter bending). You also need a set of tables to know the right angles for the cuts.

Instead, Tom uses a simple power miter saw and arranges the material and so it sits confronting the saw fence at the same angle it will be nailed to the wall.

Although the molding has to be upside downward in this method, a simple downwardly cut of the blade set at 45 degrees produces the perfect bevel and miter at once, as y'all'll see.

Steps for Installing Crown Molding

Installing crown molding, however, is a task that strikes fright in the heart of every amateur carpenter—and even some pros. Considering it sits at an angle on the wall, each joint is made of compound angles. Getting information technology right requires a lot of patience, an aptitude for spatial relations, and a few tricks from an experienced pro.

Step 1: Brand the First Scarf Cutting

Cutting the scarf joint for crown molding.

When 2 lengths of molding are required for a long wall, bring together them with an angled, overlapping scarf articulation.
If you're working counterclockwise around the room, adjust the saw for a 45-caste miter cut to the left. (Swing it to the right if you're going clockwise.)
Then put the crown, upside down as before, on the saw table between the woods guide fence and the vertical saw debate. Make certain the slice yous're keeping is on the side to which the blade is turned.
Hold the molding deeply, then cutting through information technology slowly.
Leave the bract in the same position, and cutting the adjoining length of molding with the piece y'all're keeping on the other side of the blade.

Step 2: Complete the Scarf Joint

Installing the adjoining piece of crown molding

Apply a sparse, even layer of glue to the scarf joint on the molding that's now nailed in place.
Install the adjoining piece of crown so it creates a tight-fitting scarf joint.
Fasten the second piece with finish nails acme and bottom, and wipe away whatsoever glue from the scarf articulation.
Afterwards the glue dries, use 100-grit sandpaper to sand the joint smooth.

Pace 3: Make up one's mind Bending of Exterior Corner

An outside corner can be formed by cutting two pieces of crown with opposite miters of 45 degrees each, making sure both miters are longer on the superlative of the crown (the office that rests on the saw table when y'all cut). But sometimes a wall corner isn't exactly square, and so you lot must first measure the bending formed past the two walls and and so bisect it.
To practice this, accept 2 pieces of woods of exactly the same width and hold ane against each wall, making sure their ends overlap by an inch or so.
Adjacent, draw pencil lines on the face of the upper piece (the one held flat to the ceiling) aslope each edge of the overlapping slice.
Describe a diagonal line to connect two opposite corners of the marks.

Step 4: Exam the Angle Cuts

Turn the pieces so they are stacked precisely one on top of the other (brand certain to put the slice with the pencil lines on top).
And so take this stack to the miter saw, put i set of the boards' edges against the saw fence, and arrange the blade angle to match the diagonal line.
Saw through both pieces at the aforementioned time along the diagonal line. This cut bisects the angle of the exterior corner.
Hold the cut pieces against the ceiling as shown and check for a tight fit. If necessary, mark in which direction the angle is off, adjust the saw to match this corrected angle, reassemble the two boards as before, and cut them.
Then test again to exist sure.

Pace v: Cut the Outside Miter

Mount a piece of crown in the saw (upside down every bit before), leaving the blade fix to the angle used to cut the test bit. This is the angle you'll use to cut the outside corner.
Because the molding is upside down, if the saw bract is swung to the right, you will be cutting the right-half piece of the articulation and y'all'll demand to cut off the right terminate of the workpiece. If the bract is swung to the left, cut off the left cease of the workpiece to consummate the left half of the articulation.
In one case you've cutting the first piece, use the test scrap to adjust the blade in the contrary direction and cutting the other half of the joint.

Step vi: Install the Molding on the Corner

Concord the molding pieces in position at the outside corner and check for a tight fit (left).
Before nailing the molding to the wall, bore two pilot holes through the point of the miter joint. A 4d finish nail chucked into your drill works well here.
And so utilize gum to the miter joint and fasten each slice of crown with 6d or 8d finish nails height and lesser.
At the corner articulation, tap 4d finish nails through the pilot holes.
Ready all the nails.

Pace 7: Make a 45-Caste Cut

Inside corners are equanimous of a square-cutting piece that butts the corner, and a corresponding piece that'south cut on an bending and coped (carefully cut along the molding's contour) to conform to the commencement piece.
Begin past installing a slice of crown with a square-cut cease (zippo degrees on the saw).
Then position a second piece of molding upside downwardly on the saw and adjust the blade for a miter cutting. If this slice comes to the articulation from the right side as shown in Step 3, swing the bract to 45 degrees left and brand the cut. The bulk of the molding should exist sitting on the left side of the saw.
If cutting a left-side coped piece, swing the blade to 45 degrees right, with the molding sitting to the right.

Step eight: Cope the Edge

Highlight the very edge of the cut, forth the profiled front of the molding, with a pencil.
Side by side, using a coping saw, cut away the bevel. Angle the coping saw blade toward the rear nigh 5 degrees — a technique known as back beveling—and carefully follow the molding contour equally you cut.
Utilise the miter saw table to brace the workpiece when cutting.

Stride nine: Check the Fit

Subsequently completing the coped cut, test-fit information technology against the square-cut crown that'southward nailed in place.
If necessary, use a rasp to remove more wood or smoothen out the coped cut.
Smash the coped molding in identify and set the nails.

Footstep x: Cut the Return

Where the crown molding doesn't butt ito something, yous need to cease information technology with a return. Cut a 45-degree miter on the end of the crown (as yous did for an exterior corner) and nail it upward.
Adjacent, make a 45-caste cutting in the opposite management on another slice.
Accommodate the saw to null degrees and lay the piece flat and face-down on the saw tabular array. You'll demand to remove your wood guide debate for this.
Cut through the crown, starting at the very point of the miter.

Step xi: Consummate the Return

Bore two airplane pilot holes through the tiny triangular return with a 4d stop nail chucked in your drill.
Apply a sparse coat of glue to the return, then press it into identify and hold it for a minute or two.
Blast the joint gingerly with 4d nails through the pilot holes merely if the glue fails to hold.
Set the nails and fill all nail holes with putty.

Tools:

Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/molding/21016473/how-to-install-crown-molding

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