For love of a pin nailer.. (continued)

We've put that handy pin nailer to use on another issue - cabinet crown molding.

Why I insisted on included crown molding above the upper cabinets? I don't know. Having those cabinets go straight to the ceiling would've been just fine... but, you know, hindsight...

We (I?) fretted about the process for months off and on. Remember what our crown molding motto is? "Cut close and caulk". Yeah, doesn't work so well on stained molding. Remember Franken-corner? Oh the horrors... Anyway, I'll spare you the drama and details but we made one hugely smart decision on this crown molding: to cut it out and assemble it on the ground, not in the air like we normally would. This way the corners look perfect.. Certainly there are gaps and imperfections in other places (small ones, August is still a perfectionist), but the corners are PERFECT.

And we of course used the pin nailer to attach the pieces, so you can't even see the little holes.

Creative Problem Solving

Problem: Giant crack in the sheetrock on the ceiling. HUGE!

Solution: Faux beam. Ta da!

Just kiddin'. We didn't stop there... I watch HGTV. Now we have space separation, transition, and blah blah blah... best of all, no *visible* crack in the ceiling.

Evolution of a Staircase

Continuing in our efforts to NOT work on cabinets anymore, we have reworked both of the staircases. They have been the only bad surprise yet in the process of removing the carpet. They were pine, so they had a zillion carpet staples and dents. Some of them were even hacked off on the side where they added the lovely rounded section off to the side.

So, now they're all new. Half new really. We patched and painted the risers, but the treads are all new. They're oak and they kinda match the color of the oak flooring. Not perfect but I had no interest in mixing and matching and all that. This was a one-coat-and-done project. Regardless they look a lot better than the pine ones.

Living Room Work Continues

For August and I, this whole house renovation process is basically about answering our own questions like:

• "Can we scrape popcorn ceilings?" (yes)
• "Can we install a whole house fan?" (yes)
• "Can we keep a landscaped yard looking nice?" (several things are dying... more on that later...)

So now we're at "Can we install crown molding?". We attempted it once before at my grandparents house. Including my dad, that makes 3 engineers, we didn't even get one junction to work right in several hours. We ended up paying to have it done by professionals. Later we realized that we didn't have the ideal saw, and on top of that, the one we had was broken and also missing a piece. This time we at least had the right tools: fancy Dewalt compound miter saw and angle measure. It still took us about 8 hours just to hang the stuff. Here are some tips we discovered:

- Measure corners, they are probably not square. Divide this angle by two for exterior corners. For interior, divide the measurement by 2 but cut the complementary angle... That's 46 degrees for a 92 degree corner, which we had several of.
- If you are going to have joints in a long stretch, make them near the corners, because its waaaay easier to manuever a smaller section into a corner. Of course, avoid joints if at all possible.
- Try fastening the corner pieces together on the ground, especially if you have wavy walls and out-of-square corners.
- Get a good stud finder and mark those studs before hand. Its hard enough to hold the molding and the nail gun over your head. Don't complicate the issue by trying to find the studs at the last second.
- Choose painted molding. That way you can make some mistakes, caulk and repaint them, and no one will be able to tell the difference. Case in point: Franken-corner. Here's a good shot of him:

We fought this corner for quite some time, as you can see. Definitely the worst of the worst. However, a little caulk, some fresh paint, and voila:


So the moral of the story is: yes, we can install crown molding, provided we can caulk the fool out of it. If you get right up on it, you can of course still see the mistakes, but from regular eye level, it looks flawless. We are majorly indebted to the inventor of caulk.

Let's take a look back at that check list. We are getting there! orange peel ceilings -> paint ceilings -> paint ceilings again? -> 2nd coat of paint on walls -> hang crown molding -> paint bay window -> install recessed lighting -> pull up carpet!! -> install new mantel -> install baseboards and quarterround