We installed crown molding in our daughter’s bedroom and I’m feeling quite proud. *pats self on back* And it was surprisingly cheap to pull off (less than $100!) and easy to execute (once I had the right tools).
My last attempt at installing crown was a bit of a rough ride. It still turned out just fine, but a combination of factors (being tired from book shoots, being short on materials, it being my first time, etc, etc) nearly made me swear off installing crown molding ever again. But I’m glad I didn’t because this time it went much more smoothly and the results are well worth the effort.
So let me back up, tell you how I did it, and explain why crown molding went from one of my most dreaded projects to one I’ll surely be doing again.
Installing Crown Molding: Video Tutorial
The photos in this post will show you how we installed crown in our daughter’s nursery, but it was so easy that we decided to do all of the other bedrooms too. So in the video below you can see each step in detail as we install crown molding in her big girl room.
Purchase Your Crown Molding Ahead Of Time
First, I purchased my materials and let them sit in our house for a week so the wood could acclimate to our home (the key is letting it expand or contract based on your home’s humidity before it’s on the wall, since if you nail it in and then it contracts or expands on the wall you’re left with cracked or bowed molding). I bought the standard 3 5/8″ crown from Lowe’s because it appears to be what the previous owners installed in our other rooms (every room except for the guest bedroom, playroom, and Clara’s room have crown already – so we thought finishing off those spaces would make the whole house feel equally upgraded).
Each 8ft, pre-primed piece was about $9.50 so, including a couple of extras to cover my butt, my total material cost was $72 (I ended up getting to return some, but I’ll get to that soon enough).
Getting The Right Installation Tools
Like most molding or trim installation projects, you’ll want a way to cut your molding and tools for nailing it in. You can do both of these steps by hand, but simple power tools make it MUCH faster. We used a miter saw like this one and a nail gun (the ones photographed in this post are no longer available, so I’ve updated these link to our current favorites).
We already had a saw and nail gun on hand, but we did purchase the Kreg Crown-Pro. I had read great reviews of it and considering my love of the Kreg Jig, I figured it was worth the $30 price tag to give it a go. Spoiler alert: I love this thing (perhaps it and my Jig can be sister wives or something). And no, they haven’t twisted my arm to say this. They don’t even know I bought it yet.
Once assembled (which takes all of five minutes) it looks like this. It’s basically a platform on an adjustable angle so you can cut your crown molding at the same angle that it will sit against the wall. Sounds simple, and it is, but this is a huge help when it comes to cutting crown (it was getting my wood to stay at this angle while cutting it last time that gave me hours of trouble).
To find the angle the cutting guide should be set at Kreg includes an Angle-Finder tool so you can determine the “spring angle” – or the angle at which the crown tips away from your wall. Apparently, most moldings sit at either 38°, 45° or 52°. Mine was 38°.
Then you just use the red guide on the underside of the Crown Pro to match. Now the cutting guide is ready to help you cut.
Measuring Your Wall Angles And Cuts
But to get my saw ready to cut, I had to figure out the angles on my walls because – as anyone who has looked carefully at their walls before knows – not every corner is exactly 90°. And these not-quite-right angles can mess you up if you’re not careful. Thankfully the Kreg kit also comes with a handy little Angle-Finder tool.
So after measuring and recording every angle, I could figure out how my miter saw should be turned to give me the right cuts. Luckily most of my corners were very close to 90°, so I could set my saw at 45° (half of 90°) for pretty much everything. For the non-so-perfect corners there was a bit of extra math involved that I won’t get into here because it depends on how your particular saw is labeled, but the instruction booklet that came with the Kreg has a great illustration for this.
And while I was on a roll, Sherry helped me take precise length measurements from corner-to-corner along each wall of the room using a tape measure (this went MUCH faster with an extra set of hands, btw). So definitely try to recruit someone else to help you measure from corner to corner along the ceiling line (as opposed to measuring along the floor and assuming the ceiling’s the same, since often times it’s not).
Outside Versus Inside Corners
Another thing that I was constantly getting mixed up last time I tried to tackle crown molding was exactly which direction I should be cutting the wood. Which way does my saw go? Which side of the blade do I put the wood on? For some reason my brain doesn’t visualize it very well, especially when having to mentally toggle between cutting inside corners and outside corners (of which Clara’s room has both, gah!).
Luckily, the Kreg tool helped me out there too. Right on the guide there are some little stickers that show how your blade should be angled and where you should place your wood to get each of the four most popular cuts. Life saver.
Cutting & Hanging Your Crown Molding
The other important thing I was reminded from the Kreg instruction book is that when cutting a piece of crown molding you have to turn it upside down, so that the bottom (the part that sits against the wall) faces up. I totally would’ve forgotten this had I not read the instructions.
So with my measurements all taken, my Crown Pro all set up, and my saw blade angled I was finally ready to get cracking, er, crowning (er, nevermind, that sounds like I was giving birth – and I’m pretty sure birth doesn’t involve this much sawdust).
In addition to my Kreg taking the guesswork out of cutting, the other thing that made this crown project ten billion times easier was having a nail gun (we had bought one to install board & batten last week). I can’t even begin to describe how long it took me to hammer in all of the nails by hand for our last crown installation adventure, so just going pop-pop-pop with the nail gun was the best feeling in the world.
I think it took me just about 2 hours to get all of the molding cut and nailed in place this time. Which is a miracle considering last time it took me two hours just to figure out how to make my first cut. And all-in-all, things turned out quite nicely in my opinion. Here’s an un-caulked corner for your viewing pleasure.
One shortcoming of the Kreg tool is that it doesn’t really address scarf joints – the ones where two pieces of crown meet along a straightaway, not at a corner. This happens when your wall is longer than your piece of molding and – since I could only fit eight foot pieces in my car – I had three of these joints in the room. Luckily I was able to figure it out on my own pretty quickly, but I did screw up a couple of pieces because the Kreg guides hadn’t made that part as dummy-proof as the rest of it.
Finishing Touches: Caulk & Paint
Since the actual installation didn’t take me nearly as long as I thought, we even had time before Clara needed her room back (for the ever-important nap) that we could get our caulking done. We just used white paintable Dap caulk (made for windows, doors, and moldings) to fill all of the seams (like those pictured above) along with nail holes. We also ended up caulking the line where the molding meets the ceiling (even if though there wasn’t a noticeable gap, it made it look a lot more seamless to do that around the entire room).
See, much better. And the stuff isn’t even painted yet!
So yeah, I do still have to paint it – since there are some parts where the primer is pretty scuffed up – but even still, we’re very happy with the results and, as Clara would say after she uses the potty successfully, “I’m so proud.”
Total Project Cost
Oh yeah, and since I didn’t need all eight of the pieces that I purchased (I only had to cut into one of my back-up pieces for that confusing-at-first scarf joint) our material cost ended up being $67. Add the cost of the Kreg Crown Pro ($30) put my total project cost at just $97. Not bad! We’ve seen enough house listings that say “crown molding throughout” to know that it’s a nice selling point – and now we’re one room closer to a fully crowned house.
With my new found crown-fidence (see what I did there?) I’m gonna tackle Clara’s big girl room, the guest room, and even our freshly board & battened hallway so that every room in the house (except for closets, bathrooms, and our little laundry nook) will have crown molding. And who knows, I might just go crazy and do those at some point if I’m craving some quality nail gun time. Well, probably not the closets…
More Crown Molding Projects & How-Tos
Since first publishing this post, we’ve tackled a few other crown molding installations – include how to make beefier, more fancy looking molding. Check them out below:
- How To Install Chunky Crown Molding For An Upgraded Look
- Adding Crown Molding To Kitchen Cabinets
- Installing Crown Molding Around Built-In Bookcases
Does anyone have any tricks to their crown molding installations that they’d like to pass on? Or have you had a similarly discouraging first experience with crown, only to crack the crown molding code on your second attempt?
It looks great! Are you going to add molding to Clara’s big girl room, too??
Yup, all the rooms without it (like her big girl room and the guest room) are on the agenda!
xo
s
Looks nice!!
I’m SOOOOO bookmarking this post! We had a friend do ours in every room but the kitchen and we’re pretty happy with it but it is something I would love to be able to conquer at some point. When we finally do move from here, I’m sure the place won’t have crown or at least crown throughout and I’d love to be able to save a rump load of money doing it ourselves!
Nice job! Looks great!
Unrelated to crown molding, which Kreg Jig do you have? I’m torn between buying the mini for $20 or saving up for the full system.
We have the $99 basic one and then we just bought clamps since those help a ton!
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Sarah–I have the mini. I debated and debated which to get, but since it was for a small project and I wasn’t sure if I’d use it much, I bought the mini. It works perfectly well…so well that I use it a lot more than I thought I would. HA! If I eventually wear it out I’ll probably spring for the one John and Sherry have, but the mini works great. I would definitely also get the special Kreg clamp with the pin in one end and plate on the other (hard to see but pictured in this post: https://www.younghouselove.com/2011/11/build-it-in-build-it-in/)–I found it essential to hold the two pieces you’re attaching nice and securely while you screw them together. Good luck!
Racheal- Thank you Thank you THANK YOU for sharing that. I have the mini too and have issuses keeping the jig in place with a regular clamp, it wants to move every time I start to drill. I’m so getting one of those clamp, I didn’t even know the had them. -Meg
Great tip!
xo
s
We haven’t seen Clara’s room for awhile. It gets me every time. So, so sweet. I REALLY needed this post. We have zero crown molding in our house. We did add crown molding to the top of our built-ins, but we cheated and used styrofoam molding. Yes, styrofoam. It looks like the real thing (http://www.chrislovesjulia.com/2012/03/built-in-billys-part-2.html) but for our bedrooms, we’d love to add the real stuff…if we get up enough courage!
That’s so cool Julia!
xo
s
Looks great! So much more simple than (I reviewed) the kitchen! How classy!
clara and the potty, i’m so proud? you’re killin’me.
ima start callin’ her miss keep-it-real clara from now on.
Haha! She’s hilarious on the potty. Let’s just say there are long goodbyes and things like “have a good time!” before she flushes.
xo
s
Wow! I can’t believe how much of a difference some molding made! Great job!
I’ve done shoe molding before and making the cuts was definitely the most difficult part of the process. They can be confusing to visualize and I was also using a miter saw, which was labor intensive. A nail gun makes it so much more fun, though.
Oh how I love trim! It’s the finishing touch in a great room. We just finished adding some great new baseboard in our house and I am amazed at how great it looks!
Awww, I forgot how beautiful Clara’s nursery is! So, so pretty! I love how the colors meld together and still think the curtains and light just give the room that extra special “something.” Great eye candy this AM (and the crown molding looks great too, John ;) Thanks!
It looks so good! My walls have waves in them, so getting thing to lay flat against the wall can be a huge pain in the butt. Did you guys run into any of that?
Oh yes, that’s where the caulking step came in! Our walls are really old and wavy, so we had some spaces to fill, but once they were filled it looked so much smoother!
xo
s
I love it, now I want to get on that in my own home… lovely job! Can’t wait to see more!
Looks so good! I’m always afraid that adding crown to our 8ft ceilings might make the room feel smaller but yours makes it look bigger – I’ll have to look into this!
Oh yeah, there’s something about crown that draws the eye up so rooms look taller. I also love floor to ceiling curtains to make a room look extra tall (they’re my two favorite tricks).
xo
s
Crown molding definately makes a room in my books. Great job – it is definitely not a easy task with all those corners. :-D
Looks great, you two! Really adds that nice finishing touch to the space and looks so polished. I’m bookmarking this one for the hubby :)
I adore clara’s nursery :) We’re finding out the sex of our babe in a couple of weeks … if it’s a girl, those light pink walls are calling my name!
Aw, that’s so exciting Gemma!
xo
s
We just did our crown too! In the master bedroom and the living room/attached dining room.
Yours looks awesome, and I’m kicking myself for not getting a kreg. Would have saved so much time! But I agree that putting up crown goes much better with the nail gun and two sets of hands!
Looks great! That Kreg tool seems pretty handy, too. When we first bought our house, we had a contractor try to nail the crown flat up against the wall. It was crazy. I wish I had a picture :)
Oh my gosh, no way!
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s
Looks great!!! What area in the molding did you nail? Only the top part where it attaches to the ceiling? I’m looking forward to doing it myself soon.
We did the base of it (where you can fire it straight into the top of the wall) and the top of it (where you can rotate the gun up and fire it into the ceiling). We’ll have to make a video to show you in the next room we tackle!
xo
s
I’d love to put up crown molding in our house, but our kitchen/living room area has vaulted ceilings so that obviously wouldn’t work there. I can’t decide if it would look weird to have it in the bedrooms, bathrooms and basement but not in the living area. Any thoughts?
I think it would look so pretty in the bedrooms, that’s where I’d start!
xo
s
Looks great!
We put crown moulding in our master bedroom and dining room this weekend, and were so excited to be working on the same project as you guys! Believe it or not, you can actually fit 16′ sections of the stuff into a Hyundai Elantra if your husband is stubborn enough…
Haha, that’s amazing!
xo
s
What is the name of that paint color in her room? I love that pale pink! Thanks
L
It’s called Proposal by Benjamin Moore.
xo
s
This looks great. Thanks for posting the process in such detail. We’d like to attempt this in all the rooms of our house. This will be a good resource when we get brave enough to try.
This looks fantastic! Well done!
I didn’t think crown would make that much of a difference to the look of a room – but I was wrong! It looks great, I’m really surprised at the impact, well done.
It makes a MASSIVE difference! Our house has crown molding throughout downstairs, but upstairs is half-half (the older part doesn’t have it but the bedrooms added by a later extension do). So every day I get to compare how my daughter’s bedroom look so crisp and our bedroom so sloppy. It is getting old now, time to do something about it!
I will show these before-after to encourage my husband to give it a shot!
Thanks for the detailed tutorial.
Good luck Thais!
xo
s
That Kreg thing is genius and worth it just for the angle finder thingy! When we first did ours, the crown we have in our house is too tall to even stand up on the saw. Thankfully our saw tells you exactly how to set everything to get the proper angles. It would have helped if we figured that out sooner you know, by reading the instructions, but I literally took a picture of the page in the booklet so we wouldn’t lose it and/or forget. The whole miter table/bevel angles we used are here… http://thelilhousethatcould.com/2012/02/21/how-to-install-crown-molding/
Love it!
xo
s
My husband just cut crown molding for our powder room. That Kreg Jig tool would have come in handy. Our powder room has 6 walls and several non 90 degree angles. It was a pain to figure out. If we ever do crown again, we’ll have to get that jig. Thanks for the tip. Clara’s room looks great.
Last week I ran out to get a laser level after your post. This week, I’ll be getting a Kreg Crown Pro! I’m not so scared of my 18′ x 24′ family room after reading your post. Thanks.
Good luck Laurie!
xo
s
Can I just take this moment to admit that I’ve had moulding sitting in the upstairs hall for, like, 5 months, and I’m terrified of putting it up?
Yeah.
Also when my dad did the moulding downstairs there were so many little joints and cracks, and I’m thinking I need to tackle them with some caulk, because they look sad and puzzle-y compared to yours.
Oh yes, caulk will make it look awesome! Good luck Amber!
xo
s
Semi related, as we drove to Reno and back this weekend, there were a few YHL points on I-80:
*BM on the side of a mountain (Battle Mountain or Benjamin Moore- your pick)
*Sherwin William trucks and plant (why? see BM)
*our Pinterest Challenge drum kept the sweet girl happy once we landed after 10 bours of driving – http://www.newmomstalk.com/2013/02/27/she-drums-wint…rest-challenge
(Considering there’s not much on 80 in Nevada beyond prisons and beautiful mountains, these things were a highlight for us!)
Haha, I love it!
xo
s
This looks great! It’s crazy how much of a difference a little bit of crown molding makes. :)
John + Nail Gun + Kreg Crown Thingie = Love.
WOW! The crown molding makes such a difference at making the room look “finished.” I might have to spring this idea on my husband to try in our house!
John, you did a wonderful job. The Mister has installed crown molding in almost all of the rooms in our fixer upper. I bet he would have really liked the Kreg Crown Pro and a miter saw. He installed all of the molding with a coping saw and circular saw. The crown molding really finishes out the look of the rooms.
Wow, that’s a ton of work! Hats off to him!
-John
Great tips! We had crown molding installed in our former house. It is a bear figuring out those angles. Definitely pinning this for future use. Love that Kreg tool.
We installed baseboards in our present house. Would that tool be useful for those? Or is solely for crown?
It was just for crown (since those angles are different). With baseboards you can just lay them flat, so you wouldn’t need the tool to hold them up at an angle while cutting them. Hope that makes sense!
xo
s
Looks fabulous!!
I would love to put crown molding in my bedrooms, but my little shaker style house from 1940 has one wall in each room that angles and morphs into the ceiling. It makes painting interesting too, one permanent accent wall or painted ceilings. And floor to ceiling curtains? Nope, the top is eye level (and I’m only 5′ 2″ too!) where the angled section starts.
The nursery looks beautiful!
Did you guys have any bumps or unevenness in the ceiling to contend with? We’ve been gearing up for a crown molding project, but are nervous about how we’ll work around those things in our old house.
Oh yes, that’s where the caulk comes in! Our walls and ceilings can be a little wavy, but once you hang the crown and caulk the gaps it all looks seamless!
xo
s
Looks great! I’m glad to hear you found an easier way to figure out how to get those angles right! A change so simple and easy, yet makes a world of difference!
It looks awesome! Can you come do my house? My husband will never get it done because he despises anything to do with wood work. It will get done faster(or at all even) if I teach myself how to do it. :\
Haha, I’ll send John right over!
xo
s
Looks great! We have crown in our house too. Those cuts sure can be tricky. One tip you might want to try on your next room is to paint the molding first. We painted them with two coats of semi-gloss white paint then put the molding up. Then we just filled the nail holes and put a dab of paint to touch up. You can’t even see the nail holes. Saves a bunch of time!
So smart!
xo
s
Agreed: faster & easier to paint trim before installing it. Saves the hassle of working on a ladder to paint trim after installation AND you don’t have to worry about ‘oops’ mistakes when the trim paint gets on the ceiling and/or walls.
We have low ceilings (7.5 foot?) and small rooms. Do you think it would make the rooms look bigger or smaller? We’re probably going to do it in our bedroom (which has a dark/bold color on the walls), and I’ll have to tell my hubby about that Kreg thing. Would it still be useful if you already have a miter saw, or redundant?
We have a miter saw and it’s definitely helpful! The tool is the blue thing that you lay the crown on and it angles the wood so you can cut it with your miter saw at the right angle! It’s so much easier. As for the 7.5″ rooms, ours are just 8′ tall, and crown draws the eye up and makes them feel taller. Also, floor to ceiling curtains make a squat room feel much taller, so I’d add those too!
xo
s
Sweet! Totally getting that for hubs, then.
We actually used to have floor to ceiling curtains in that room, but it drove me insane because the room is also very small (queen bed + 2 nightstands is wall to wall with just enough room for the closet to open, and I have about 1.5 feet between the end of the bed and the dresser to walk to my side). So one window is totally behind a nightstand and it just looked messy – it actually felt like I could breathe when I switched them out to shorter. I am planning to DIY some curtains, though, so I might give that look another try.
http://www.jennahsgarden.com/2013/01/project-blue-bedroom/
Sounds so pretty! Good luck Jennah!
xo
s
I can’t wait to tackle crown molding in our house. We bought it from a company that flips houses and there is some strange rounded pieces that stop in the middle of walls and come down some vertical corners and were just painted over. I also painted over them when we first moved in b/c I was baffled, but I guess they’ll have to be plied off the wall. I’ll be bookmarking this and looking for the Kreg accessory.
Also, I saw this floating around facebook this morning: http://gizmodo.com/5988025/watch-a-music-video-of-macklemores-thrift-shop-hilariously-made-with-ms-paint
It’s the non-censored version though, in case Clara’s within earshot.
Thanks Holly! Will check it out when Clara’s napping!
xo
s
Just watched this – SO hilarious! Awesome find!
It looks so good, yall!
Thanks Cat!
xo
s
Just an fyi. Although I don’t live in the Richmond area, we did find that our locally owned lumber yard sold the same crown molding as Lowe’s about half the price. We couldn’t believe it. You might want to check around.
Such a great tip! Thanks Betsy!
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s
Love this! We’ve done crown in a few rooms but it would be nice to finish off the whole house! I might have missed it but are you guys going to add crown to the hallway? I am debating about this since we will be doing board & batten.
By the way, I am a little surprised that the Petersiks are just now getting a nail gun :) Do you guys have cell phones yet? ;) lol.
Haha, I know, right?! We’re like cavemen using two sticks to make fire.
xo
s
Does the kreg tool eliminate having to use the coping saw? Some rooms in my house have crown and some don’t. I’d love to finish it off but the angles really intimidate me lol.
Yes it eliminates the coping saw! So much easier!
xo
s
You guys are the best part of my day! I look forward to 10:30am every (week) day.
Aw thanks Marie! You’re so sweet!
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