Humbling Experience

[Tdog]

A few months ago my wife nagged us into painting a spare bedroom, walls, ceiling & trim. Gotta admit, she did pitch in & help. She pained most of the trim while I was at work. And she did a little of the walls. Since she also wanted crown molding in the room, I told her not to be compulsive about the wall-ceiling border. Well, we finished the painting & I went out & bought a compound miter saw - - a nice Craftsman. I used it a few times for odd projects, but kept putting off the crown molding. And time passed. Of course the room sat there, with grungy transition from the wall to ceiling. The wife eventually turned up the intensity about finishing the room, so last Friday I came home with 80 feet of molding for a weekend project. Now understand that, while I’ve built a few things, like my deck & barn - - - - but I make my living at a desk. I’m not a craftsman, however, this project seemed manageable. No way I’m going into this without some instructions, so I look up crown molding on the web, & I read the owner’s manual. I won’t say the ‘how to’ sounded simple, but I was confident I could handle it. What I didn’t count on was being confused about right & left. The instructions vary, depending on whether you are doing an inside corner or an outside corner. They tell you ‘for a right inside corner’, do this; and for a ‘left inside corner’, do that. Ditto for outside corners. Stupid me, I spent half of Saturday, frustrated & fouling the air with expletives, because everything seemed backwards. It took till almost quitting time for me to have the Eureka experience that their ‘left’ & ‘right’ referred to the sides of the corner. Somehow, by brain translated that to mean the left or right ends of the piece of molding - - & that made things exactly backwards - - the right end of a section of crown molding will be the left side of the corner. Doh!

Well, too late to make the story short, sorry. I’ve got the molding all cut & tacked in place - - I’ll come back next weekend with the brad nailer, slop on some caulking to cover a few spots, & finish the project. Makes me respect the people who do this for a living.

Now, of course, she wants to start on our bedroom. What have I started?

 

[Ozarker]

Like I keep trying to tell my wife, just because I own a hammer doesn't mean I'm a carpenter.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Even attempting crown molding says you're a brave son of buck. It was explained to me that the kind of language I used when attempting it myself was not meant for the indoors.

BTW I purchased a shoe and blade for a committed sabre saw just for doing the backtrimming on crown molding. It's a great tool. But it's like most tools, there is a learning curve. I have real problems with learning curves.

Anyway if you're doing much crown molding I can find the source for this shoe. You order it for a specific brand of saw. When it's installed it allows you to power saw what you see most folks doing with a coping saw.

I put mine on a Bosch. I have three sabre saws. A Porter Cable that turned out to just less than what I found I needed. A Bosch that was perfect. Then another Bosch just like it that I put the coping foot on so I wouldn't find myself losing vital parts for the conversion going back and forth.

 

[Chuck52]

For the small amount of trim work I've done in the past, I found a Dremel mototool with a sanding ddum invaluable. I can never get the coping saw cut right at the edge, but the little sanding disk cleans it up in no time so the fit is perfect. Saves valuable filler!

Chuck

 

[CSAW]

<font color=red>I’ll come back next weekend with the brad nailer, slop on some caulking to cover a few spots, & finish the project. Makes me respect the people who do this for a living.

<font color=black>My father always said " A little putty and a little paint makes a job what it ain't"

 

[hazmat]

Tdog,

I feel your pain. I went thru a similar experience. I also work at a desk, but I'm a mechanical engineer. I figure I can do anything as long as I can get a hold of decent instructions. Always the optomist. So I bought the Home Depot's Home Improvement 1 2 3 book & tried to cut some crown molding. I could not for the life of me figure out how to mark the line to cope the ajoining piece.

After several pieces ended up in the scrap pile & the planned long weekend to go skiing was cancelled, I swallowed my pride & called around, couple of buds - duh don't know, my dad, duh don't know, her dad "That fancy mitre saw you just bought ought to be able to do the job." (the unsaid part- you sure paid enough for it)

Lo and behold the Dewalt manual came thru for me. For an inside right do this yada yada yada. Nice pictures too. Of course even knowing that right was left & left was right I still screwed that up (twice). Here's a tip. Lay out your pieces on the floor in the room & label the corners on the backside of the molding. Also label which wall the piece goes on.

I returned the 1 2 3 book to the Depot. Anybody got suggestions on a better book? Bedroom looks great, CFO chomping at the bit to "break ground" on the dining room.

 

[livincountry]

I cheated on this one and it looks great. You can buy inside & outside corner pieces with a decorative form that allows simple square cuts on the molding runs. You can buy them at Lowes and they come in oak or poplar. They are not cheap but they make it look great. I can post a pic if this doesn't explain things well enough.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

TDog

Just went through the same thing myself on vaulted ceilings. You will get faster (and better) at it. All I did was buy some extra and sacrifice a piece, cutting and recutting the corner until I got it right. Worst part was a 5' section that had an inside corner at one end and an outie at the other. Took me 3 sticks to get it right. (Oh, I got the cuts right on the second piece, it took the 3rd one to get the length right).

SHF

 

[bgott]

I have that 1 2 3 book, I use it for a loaner. I also bought a whole line of Time Life how to books, that was also a waste of money. The best book I have is a 30 years old carpentry textbook that I ended up with. I couldn't even tell you where I got it. If I had it to do again I'd go to the community college and buy one. I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap but it's got pretty much everything in it you'd need to know. I might buy another one anyway, the techniques are the same today but it's a little obsolete on materials. Amazon probably has some good books, too.

 

[Tdog]

Yeah, DeWalt was one of my souces on the web. As you said, nice diagrams & pic's. My problem was the hard headedness of the operator who was convinced he knew what was right & what was left. I think all the instructions would have helped me more if they had labeled their pieces a-b-c-d, etc., & inlcuded a definition legend.

The part of the story I didn't tell was about the 'trial cuts' & wastage. I've got 4 sections with an inside corner on one end, & outside on the other. Simple enough concept, but I found it difficult to take the tape measurement & cut what I needed. My solution was to cut the inside corner piece & hold it up in place & mark where to cut the outside end with a pencil. Pedestrian, but it served me better.

And, I said, the saw was a nice one. The mitre & bevel adjustments had stops at the appropriate angles. And no coping required.