fdl

A friend of mine just repainted his place and installed crown modling throughout the main floor. I cant believe how much of a difference this made, for the better.

I was getting crown molding in the living room and dining room, but now I am considering it for the entire floor, including kitchen and family room. Any thoughts on this? Good idea?

dom

Did it in my Dining room and your right it makes a big difference. I've seen it all over people's houses including kitchen so

I nice addition to that as well is to increase the size of your trim without replacing all the trim. They sell trim extentions (Had no idea) easy to do and it looks great.

fdl

dom, are yours wood or plaster. and did you do it yourself? (if so, how much $$)

dom

Did it myself with wood. If I remeber correctly, roughly $200 but I may be off it was 1 1/2 ago. The room is about 12x16 or so.

I think plaster is more $$$ ?

doopstr

I there anywhere in a house that crown molding would look stupid? Like in a hallway or a foyer?

fdl

thats what I am wondering. I dont think i would put it in a hallway, but would consider a bathroom.

dom

I've seen hallway and it looked just as good IMO. Of course that house was a Bungalow and had 9ft ceilings so that may have been a factor.

fdl

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

We did crown molding in our last house and it made a huge difference. When we sold it, the first thing people would gasp at was the moldings b/c we had them in the foyer and entry hall. We basically did the whole first floor which was:

Foyer
Entry Hall
Powder Room (1/2 bath if you're a male and reading this )
Dining Room
Living Room
Kitchen
First Floor Stairway landing (it was basically 6 steps, landing, then turn and six more steps)

We also did the 2nd Bedroom on the 2nd floor. We did not do the other rooms b/c they all had vaulted ceilings and went up to the loft. We would have done the basement had we not sold since that ceiling was flat.

Oh, and for what it's worth.... we had 8 foot ceiling in the rooms we did the molding and we used 6" molding. Looked hot.

soopa

bean... got any pics? i ave 8' 6" ceilings... i should do some 6" molding...

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Let me do some digging to see if I can find any.....

booting up my personal laptop now.....

doopstr

For DIY, where is the best place to get this stuff?

chef chris

Best way to do this stuff is if you can do it yourself...labor for a crown molding job is gonna be a bundle...it's fairly time-consuming.

The new products out are a bit more expensive than traditional wood but are able to be cut with a regular miter box...no need for fancy cuts since you use joining pieces.

Adds so much visual appeal to a home, I think it's one of THE best ways to improve value...it's often the first thing someone sees when they enter the room. Combine crown molding with some small recessed lights & you are golden!

mattg

and it's very easy to do as long as you have a chop/mitre saw.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

How far are you from Elmsford, NY? There was a great place on Rt. 9a called Dykes. I know... I laughed at the name too. But what a selection. Yes, it's a bit more then Lowes or Home Depot, but the selection was better and they had just about every style installed so you could see what it looked like. Yup, they had a corner of the showroom where the ceiling was raised and they had little 3' x 3' squares in the ceiling, and each corner had a different piece of crown molding installed. Makes a huge difference. There was some molding we loved when we saw the piece, but when we located it in the showroom installed, we hated it. Saved us some headaches that way....

chef chris

http://www.ultraflexmoulding.com/

http://www.custom-moulding.com/

Home Depot carries the plastic molding, but their website doesn't offer any info on it since they won't ship it.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

FWIW, we had about 400 feet of molding installed at the last place and we paid $700 in labor. Granted we painted it and touched it up ourselves after the install... but it wasn't bad and the guy did a killer job. His seams were, well, seamless

So if you look around you can find good deals... but yes, learning to do the angles yourself will save a ton of money, but will take up a bunch of time....

Soopa - check your PM

jlukja

Do you paint the crown molding the color of the trim, the color of the walls, or the color of the ceelings?

soopa

jl... molding is usually painted white or sometimes in a contrasting/complementary shade to the wall color... like blue walls / dark blue trim... etc. i prefer plain white molding.

chef chris

Match with trim. Light trim makes moldings 'pop' in a larger room...

doopstr

The only problem with crown molding is that it draws peoples eyes up So you better have everything freshly painted and nice things on your walls.

jlukja

I was just wondering because we have white color ceelings and we were going to add crown molding in the kitchen (as a start). I'm thinking if the molding is white and the ceeling is white then the molding will tend to blend with the ceeling and disappear. It will make the kitchen look somewhat larger though (which is good). thanks guys

fdl

white crown moldings with a white ceiling and a non-white color wall looks great. They will stand out nicely.

SDCGTSX

depends on the layout to include it in kitchen. If you have cabinet crown, then it looks funny to have it in kitchen. You can dead end it on a corner before the wall that hits the cabinet crowns. Get a nice 6 inch MDF crown for about 1.20 or so / ft. Buy or rent a nice saw for the 45 degree angles.

SDCGTSX

Yes, the white crown with either off white or white ceiling and darker wall looks nice. remember to use flat or satin wall paint. anything more like semi-gloss is tacky. But the crown should be semi-gloss.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

That's exactly what we did and the moldings pop big time. I got a bunch of PMs asking for the pics I PMed to Soopa... so here is the link...

Disclaimer:
Pics are of our last house, carpet in the foyer was ripped up and replaced with tile, but I can't find that pic. Also, the dining room picture is blurry, sorry about that, but it's the best I have. I'm looking for other pics b/c I know I had a ton of nice pics from when we listed the house, but can't seem to find them.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&x=1&y=-3n89wg

fdl

Some additional pics ....

zeroday

I installed crown moulding in my living room. It made a huge difference in the room. I used synthetic; looks just like wood only no warping etc. The most difficult part was getting the corner angles mitred to match up. I bought a cheapy 'magic mitre' kit that worked pretty well.

http://www.magicmitre.co.uk/

jlukja

Wow. Those pics look great.

Do you use brads, construction adhesive, or both?