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.