Crown Molding Part Deux

When I was purchasing the crown molding for the original attempt, I had seen some decorative corner pieces that are sold individually. They're basically decorative blocks that go in the corners, against which you butt-joint the molding. Even though it's obviously used for those who don't/can't install the molding correctly, we were faced with no option other than to use them.

Here's what they look like(used without permission from the source...shhhhh):



The problem with these, we discovered, was that since we were using the oversized molding, the matching corner blocks made to fit were HUGE. The inside pieces weren't all that bad, but the outside piece was at least 12" square...WAY too big and obnoxious for the small bathroom. After some discussion, we decided there was a good chance(after seeing how much space the big molding covered) that we could get away with a smaller size of molding. We decided to try out the 3.5" stuff instead of the 5.5 stuff I had original bought. A nice side effect of this decision was that we could use a different kind of corner pieces than the really huge decorative ones. The second type is just a prefabricated corner made out of the same molding, with a slot behind it for the actual molding to be inserted. The effect is much more subtle than the decorative pieces...basically you end up with a double-thickness of molding in the corners, which when painted, don't stand out that much. Not a perfect solution, but definitely do-able at this point. So we purchased everything and off we went.

Luckily, we were fortunate that the smaller molding fit. That, combined with the "cheaters" corners, made short work of the task. All of the molding was installed within an hour. Whew....I wish I had tried this to begin with...it would have save us a ton of grief and the cost of the oversized molding, which was now useless. And I think it will turn out pretty decent.










After getting this up, I turned to installing the towel holders and finishing touches. All of these installed with no problems, and I got the doorknob on the closet.








We're on the home stretch now. Just a few minor details remain. I need to get a little bit of grout and touch up a few spots I thought would be obscured by trim that aren't. The joint between the tub and the wall need to be caulked. I plan on filling the gaps around the crown molding where the ceiling gets crazy with Spackle. Pretty much all of the nail holes are filled, but I have a little bit of scraping to do. I also have to install the cover for the heating vent that's in the room. After that, it's just another coat of paint and we're done!

I wanted to share a special thanks to my mother-in-law Linda for all of her help over the last few weeks. She did a ton of work doing a lot of the yucky jobs, like filling/sanding nail holes, re-hanging the door, fixing drywall, stripping old paint(and the whole door!), painting the chifferobe that's going to be the "cabinetry"...etc. Without her help we'd still be FAR away from finishing. Here's an action shot of her working on the furniture:



Oh, and here are the poor, neglected, mis-treated, abused, dust-covered, sad, lonely mountain bikes who've had nothing to do but hang around and watch everyone have all the "fun" these last few months. Don't worry, fellas, we're almost finished and the nice weather is on its way!




I don't know about all of you guys, but we're ready for this thing to be finished!

Crown Moulding Part I

Well, it was too good to last.... The crown moulding turned out to be a complete failure. Because of the large gap between the ceiling and the walls, I bought very large crown moulding. This complicated things, because it was hard to cut the moulding, even on the large saw. But that was really the least of the troubles. First of all, the ceiling is very uneven. Second, the walls are not completely square. These factors added together spelled doom for my crown moulding attempts.

I started off trying to do it the "right" way. In this method, you cut one side of the moulding square, and butt it against one of the walls. For the second piece of the joint(inside corner), you cut it at a 45 degree angle, and then use a coping saw, guided by the angled cut you just made, to cut the countour of the moulding. The cut you make with the coping saw is supposed to fit perfectly against the piece butted against the wall. In THEORY. Obviously, it didn't quite work out for me. I had a hard time cutting the correct angle on the saw(holding the board in the correct position, and keeping everything from moving while cutting), and I also had trouble positioning the pieces on the wall at the correct angle. There are "flats" on the back side of the moulding that serve as guides for the correct angle at which to attach it to the wall and the ceiling, but they're far from positive, and any deviation in this angle manifests itself in the corner joint. After doing one, I realized not only that the joint I just completed was NOT acceptable, but also that I really didn't learn anything in the process to help the second attempt come out any better. So I switched gears. Here's a pic of the failed attempt(with another pic of my cruddy outside corner as well):






The next technique involves simply cutting the moulding on both pieces of the joint at a 45 degree angle. I thought it probably wouldn't be perfect in the end, but it should be better than the coped method. I knew that the angles of everything would be of utmost importance if the joints were going to line up, so I used an angle gauge to create a guide for me to use in positioning the moulding in place on the walls, and I also bought a cutting guide for use with a miter saw, that both tells you how to make the cuts for the joint you're constructing, and holds the workpiece in the saw at the correct angle(for repeatability). All looked very promising, but again, no luck. The joints didn't look any better than the first go 'round. Argh! Everyone was giving me a wide berth that day, for fear of stepping in the path of flying tools and pieces of moulding... I don't blame them.

The next day, after calming down some, we thought it over and decided to cheat.

Baseboards

Well, an easy job at last. Baseboards. Nothing much to this one really other than my having to rent a miter saw from HD in order to cut everything. The basebaords in the rest of the house are the oversize stuff, and we wanted the bathroom to match. The moulding is 7 5/8 inches, which exceeded the limit of the 10" chop saw my Mom loaned me. I decided I'd just rent one of the big 12" sliding deals for the day, and hopefully knock out both the baseboards and the crown moulding(more on that later). The big saw made cutting everything a snap. No problems whatsoever.

The girls had made quite a bit of progress on the moulding, so we decided to go ahead and start working on the trim. This mainly consisted of hanging the entry door, the window trim, and the closet trim. Of course, nothing was as simple as nailing the trim back onto the wall.

First, the window. The window was on the exterior wall, which, if you remember, is now 3.5 inches thicker(new stud wall) than it used to be. The window trim was nailed directly onto the brick and plaster exterior wall originally, so now something had to make up that new space. I decided I would fill the gap with some 1x pine and just paint it. Not too difficult. I basically had to rip the strips to width(thanks again, Allen...table saw), install some supports underneath so it didn't sink, nail the new pieces up, and finish with the trim. Turned out pretty nice. Here you can see the spacer material..it's the unfinished pine:



Next was the closet trim. Here I had a similar problem, in that when I hung the new door, I didn't space it properly in relation to the painted drywall, so I had a small gap to fill. Linda came up with a great idea to just use some of the plastic shoe moulding I was using for the baseboards...it fit perfectly! I forgot to take a detail shot of it, but you should be able to see it in this pic. It's the piece directly behind the face moulding, sandwiched between the door casing and the moulding. It's also, from this angle, the piece right behind the brass hinges.





The entry door was not as easy. I've tried to describe it before, but it's hard to verbalize. The door itself is not hung by any structural members...the casing is sandwiched between the interior and exterior pieces of moulding, and then the door hung from that. Needless to say, it was very difficult to get the door at the right height, plumb, and square at the same time. I fussed with it for a few hours, and after hanging the door, found out that it was far from perfect. There was a huge gap underneath the door, the door was cock-eyed in the frame, and because of this there was a large gap on the knob side of the door. It was just ugly. At the time I was very aggravated and didn't feel like messing with it anymore, so I was prepared to just leave it that way. But the next day, when I was out of town, Linda REHUNG THE DOOR! By herself! And she did an amazing job...I don't know how she did it, but when I got back the door was perfect. It met the floor at the correct height, it was square, and all the corners lined up perfectly. Amazing! Here's the result:








Next up, baseboards and crown moulding.

Update

Well! Long time no update. Sorry it's been so long...lots of stuff going on.

We've made quite a bit of progress over the last couple of weeks, thanks in big part to some great help.

So let's see...where were we. I suppose we left off with just getting the fixtures installed. That was a nice milestone...we had a working bathroom again.

Unfortunately, the long period of disuse took its toll... My wife and mother-in-law, after working for a few hours outside stripping old moulding, came inside to find the bathroom floor covered with water. Now what? I racked my brain trying to think whether I might have done something to cause a drainage backup. If you remember, I didn't do anything to the waste lines, other than remove the old tub trap and install a new one. Since that was at the END of one of the waste branches, I didn't think that could have done anything. The only thing I was able to come up with was possibly dropping a large piece of debris into the large toilet line during demolition before I covered it.

My wife and mother-in-law called a plumbing service who came by rather quickly. They were very nice and very helpful. The pulled the toilet off the flange in order to get the snake down into the waste pipes, but could not make a sharp turn in the pipes to reach the blockage. After a couple of hours, they gave up and left(they also "hand sculpted" the wax ring I had installed, as it was slightly too small and was allowing a little bit of moisture to seep).

The next day, my wife was out of town, so my Mother-in-law, Linda, was kind enough to take care of things in her absence. The second plumber tried the same thing and couldn't make the turn either, so he ended up digging a hole in the yard next to the existing "clean-out" so that he could just tap into the pipe underground. Eventually, he got there and pulled out a football-sized ball of roots. Argh... When he finished, he(finally!) put a clean-out pointing towards the house so that I can clean out the section that's been currently inaccessible. The root problems should be over.

So, after that delay, we're back in business. As I'd mentioned, Linda had been visiting us for a few weeks, helping my wife strip paint from the old moulding, and pitch in wherever she was needed. She worked hard! I'll continue in the next post.