Mad Crown Moulding Skillz

Nancy and I decided to take on the seemingly simple task of trying to put up crown moulding. The plan was to start simple, in the powder room, with its 90-degree angles and horizontal ceiling, and work our way up to the more difficult rooms. First, we had to buy a compound miter saw and 24 feet of crown moulding, which we did yesterday at our new home away from home..Lowe's. Nancy painted them yesterday so they would be dry by today.

After lunch today, we decided it was go time. We ventured out into the newly organized garage. The sweltering 120 degree sauna that is our garage did not deter us. First we decided to "practice" using our new saw on some of the scrap 2x4s from the house going up next door. So far, so good. No severed fingers or mangled limbs. Then, we decided to ratchet things up a notch and try it on the actual moulding, of which we had just a few feet extra. We had bought a nice little Do-It-Yourself Crown Moulding book at Lowe's, which I offered to go get from inside before we attempted this. "No", Nancy (the Geometry teacher) says. "The walls are 90 degree angles, so you just cut each end at 45 degree angles, and nail it up." I reluctantly agreed to the trial and error vs. read the directions approach, since this is typically my philosophy in life anyway.

We made the first cut, held the two pieces together, and...well, they would have fit together better if we had just wacked off the ends with a machete. Eight practice cuts later, and no closer to acheiving even the slightest degree of congruency between the two ends of moulding, we agreed it might be time to go get the book. A few seconds into thumbing through the pages, we soon realized this wasn't quite as simple as we had envisioned. There were charts, that took up three pages, to determine the cut angle of the saw and the tilt angle of the saw, which all depends on the angle of the corner, the angle of the moulding (all crown moulding is not created equal), the relative humidity, the phase of the moon, and application of Newton's 45th Law of Thermodynamics.

Five more practice cuts later, and long since having used our "extra" moulding and halfway into what we had planned on actually using, we finally figured it out, with the help of our trusty chart. The "simple" angles of the cut and the tilt respectively, are 31.6 degrees and 33.9 degrees, by the way, for a 90 degree corner. I'm sure we would have eventually figured that out ourselves.

We took some notes while trying to figure it all out:

In the end, after an entire afternoon of sawing, nailing, sanding, painting, and cussing...we managed to finish the 5 foot by 5 foot powder room. Thanks to Nancy's mad caulking and puttying skillz, it even looks halfway decent.

I think it will be awhile before we tackle any of the other rooms in our house, with all their vaulted ceilings and non- 90 degree angles.

If my Dad has said it once, he has said it a million times: When all else fails, read the directions.