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Crown Molding, Baseboards, and Trim - Making a House Look UpscaleIf you've ever compared a regular house to a high-end house, some of the key factors you find that affect the price differential are materials used, size, and detail of finish work. For example, a larger house almost always costs more than a smaller house. And a house with granite counters and exotic wood floors fetches a higher price than a home with formica counters and pile carpets. But when you go into really high end houses, one thing you quickly notice that sets them apart is all the detail finish work in crown moldings, chair rails, custom millwork and mantels around the fireplace, built-in carpentry like bookshelves. Crown molding is placed where the walls meet the ceiling, and is usually decorative in nature and can really add to the elegance of a room. Baseboards help blend where the walls meet the flooring, and while it can be decorative, it also often hides imperfections (especially with hardwood floors) and odd angles and alignments where floor and walls aren't quite true. Other trim and millwork is often used on and around staircases, in dining rooms (chair rails), and around fireplaces.
Crown Molding and Trim BooksFor any beginner do-it-yourselfers looking to do some finish carpentry work with molding and trim, we recommend you pick up a book on the subject first. It is more complicated than it seems, and having some tips and tricks from the pros will make a real difference in how your project turns out. One really good resource is the book Crown Molding and Trim: Install it Like a Pro at CompoundMiter.com/book.html. They sell a variety of other helpful tools as well, like the Little Green Suckers which can hold long pieces of molding in place using your air compressor if you are doing a one man job; like the True Angle Tool for getting precise angular measurements. But the book is the main thing -- it covers baseboards and trim, horizontal ceilings, cathedral ceilings, bullnose corners, splicing trim, crown returns, caulking, cornices and shelves, coping, miter boxes, and charts and tables. At Amazon, check out "1001 Ideas for Trimwork", "Ask the Builder: Crown Molding Installation" DVD, and "Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins (Build Like A Pro)". All these guides will give you invaluable information for planning and executing your interior carpentry projects.Help Installing Crown MoldingThe hardest part of doing molding and trim projects is getting your corner angles cut and aligned just perfectly. Anyone can lay the straight pieces -- the angles show the touch of a real master! One way beginners cheat on this is to use pre-cut corner pieces (also known as corner blocks). These can be simple wood blocks are special milled pieces, but they fit directly in the corners and offer flat, 90 degree surfaces on their edges to meet up with your molding -- no need to try to match corner angles. So you'll have to decide what kind of look you are going for, but if you can handle corner blocks, your work will be a lot easier. If you don't use corner blocks, you will need to make a lot of what are called "miter cuts". Miter cuts are just cuts made at an angle instead of at a straight 90 degrees against the wood. Two different styles are used when joining corner pieces of molding. One is to butt the first piece squarely against the wall, then cut the second piece with a coping saw so that it fits flush up against the curves and angles of the face of the first piece -- when caulked properly, it should look like the 2 pieces are one. These can be difficult to cut, but tend to hold up better when corners shrink and expand and sometimes create gaps. The other technique is the miter cut, where the edges of both pieces are cut at 45 degree angles and then pushed up against one another to form the 90 degree corner. The problem is that when you are dealing with long pieces of wood (sometimes 10-12 feet or more) it can be a real challenge to get them just the right length so that their edges perfectly align with the piece on the opposing wall. For most of us, this means getting one piece in place, then cutting the second piece several time, taking off little slivers as you get closer to the exact fit you need. To make these cuts you need a miter saw (see below). An alternative to wood when working with molding is MDF (medium density fiberboard), a composite made from wood fiber and glue/resin. It cuts and looks just like normal wood, but it is easier to work with with no knots, no grain to match up, and is easier to cut and drill and nail.
Buying a Miter SawYou can buy or rent a miter saw. They come in several formats. The old style manual miter saw has various guards that line up with the saw blade and let you make cuts at specific angles - 30, 45, 60, etc. However, most people these days go with power saws. A standard miter saw is also called a crosscut saw. There is a platform area to lay your wood stock on, and a vertical blade with handle you pull down to make your cut. The blade can be turned at various angles to make miter cuts, although always at a perpendicular angle to the wood. Another type is the compound miter saw, where the blade also can be angled to the side for beveled cuts. The final type is the sliding compound miter, where the saw blade can be pulled in and out as well to make longer cuts across longer pieces of wood. If you are dealing with just 90 degree angle cuts with crown molding or baseboards or chair rails, you can probably get by with a regular crosscut/miter saw. Lowes offers a brief buying guide for miter saws - check it out here. Also check out the free online "Choosing and Using a Miter Saw" guide from Taunton Press here (PDF format). How much does a miter saw cost? A nice Bosch 10 inch slide compound miter saw will set you back almost $500 (Amazon.com), while a Dewalt 12" dual bevel sliding compound goes for around $550. At the lower end is the Hitachi 10" compound miter saw for $139 or the Makita 10" compound miter for $175. All these are good tools - you just need to choose what you need for your job.
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