So we finally did it! I have been wanting crown moulding installed since we moved in over two years ago, and it's finally done! We installed it in two days, on a Saturday and Sunday. We worked from morning until night both days. We didn't caulk and paint in those two days, but the bulk of the work was done.
We had a delay of a few days because we didn't have the right saw. We have a 10" compound miter saw, but it was too small for the moulding we had. The moulding is 5 1/2" wide. It didn't fit in the miter saw. So we borrowed one from a friend, which was a 12" Delta compound miter saw with a laser guide. The laser guide helped my husband line the cuts up almost precisely, and he used two angle measurement tools, one was a Centremark, and the other one was a digital anger finder.
We bought this moulding from www.wishihadthat.com. It's a cove style, which has since sold out on their website. It was on sale for $13.99/each (8' piece). Shipping was free, and there was no tax. I bought 41 pieces of it for $573. This would cover the whole downstairs of our home (except our dining room, which already had crown moulding, and our bedroom, which has a tray ceiling, so I didn't want crown moulding in there). I really thought this moulding was good quality. There were two defective pieces in total, but my husband cut around the defects, so he was able to use these two pieces. We had one full piece left and many tiny pieces that we couldn't use. My husband continued to recycle the cut moulding remnants and use them. So we put up almost 320 linear feet of moulding. This was a lot!!!
It's styrofoam (or polystyrene), lightweight, and mold and water-repellant. It's not the styrofoam that you are used to seeing on coolers when you are a kid. It's a densely packed styrofoam. It was easy to work with. The pieces were 8' in length. I thought I could've done this project myself, but there was no way I could have. You need two people to hold either end of the crown moulding as you nail it into place.
We used my trusty brad nailer. Love love LOVE!
We didn't use a stud finder because these pieces don't necessarily need to be anchored to a stud--they're so lightweight. Supposedly, you can install these without nails by just caulking the top and bottom of the moulding into place with silicone acrylic caulk. But I liked the permanent idea of nails better. Plus, it's no big deal to patch up nail holes later on.
After a few walls, my husband discovered that it was easier to cut all the corners first and install those, then do the longer pieces next. We didn't buy the precut corners (too much of a rip-off). However, if I had it to do over again, I would not cut the corners first. All the seams bother me. It's not that they're that noticeable, what with the caulk, etc., but I know they're there. And in some lights, you can really see them. I'm too OCD for seams.
I used DAP Alex Plus Acrylic Latex Caulk Plus Silicone (35 year) in the turquoise tube (except I used the color Brilliant White). This one:
This caulk is so good! I became a caulking machine with my caulk gun. I loved it!!
The pic below shows how my husband cut the returns when the wall ended (this is under our stairway).
Technically, the pic below of our dining room does not have the crown moulding we bought. Instead, the dining room had builder's grade crown moulding in it when we moved in. I just added a 1/2" piece of cove moulding two inches below the bottom of the crown moulding. Then I painted it all in with white semi-gloss paint to make it look like one beefy piece of crown. I like how it turned out.
Here's a close-up of how the moulding in the dining room looked when I got done:
Hope you enjoyed! This was the last major project I had planned for our home.
