Crown Moulding Questions.....

[mh_doni49]

I'm wanting to spruce up the place--I've got a 14x70. The previous owners had put up these flimsy pieces of wood at the tops and bottoms of all the walls. It looks really bad.

I was planning to do crown moulding throughout. But.....

1) The space above the bedroom/bathroom door frames is only about an inch (barely enough to put anything even remotely resembling door casing let alone any kind of crown). So what can I do above the doors?

2) At the location where the LR cathedral ceiling meets the flat ceiling, I'm having real difficulty coming up with a solution. Above my LR/kitchen walls -- the two that go across (most of) the width of the home -- there is a out 3 inches of flat ceiling that sticks out in to the LR/kitchen before the cath ceiling starts.

CeilingTransition.jpg

[ponch37300]

Above the doors and windows I would stop the crown and make a return to the wall. Then figure out something for above the windows, maybe just a flat piece of wood the same stain/color as the crown. Lots of work but not sure what else you would do unless you just ran it right across the windows and then ran the trim on the side of the windows up to the crown. Probably look alright.

Do you have a picture of that whole LR wall. I'm guessing there is an opening or hallway on the other side? Depending on how it is all the way across I have a few ideas. One is to hang an oak board, or what ever type of wood you will be using maybe a 1x6" all the way across and let it drop down an inch or two or whatever it will take so you can just run the crown around the corner and keep going on the 1x6".

[mh_doni49]

Hi Ponch. Thanks for the response. The space above most (if not all) the windows (and the exterior doors) is about 10 inches or so--should be more than enough for casing and crown. The only places of conflict are the interior doors -- especially by the bathroom/front bedroom.

The pic I posted above is one corner of the living room. I'll try adding some more pics.

This is one corner of the LR at the front hallway.

CeilingTransition4.jpg

This is where the ceiling meets the wall above the front door.

CeilingTransition2.jpg

This shows the two front bedroom doorways and the front bathroom doorway.

CeilingTransition3.jpg

[Greg]

You can break it with blocks at the ends like these
http://www.lowes.com/pd_311011-81562-EV ... facetInfo=

Greg

[ponch37300]

For the living room transition I would go buy a couple 1x6" boards of the same material as your crown is going to be. Nail them to the soffit and let them hang down an inch or two. This should allow you to run crown all the way around the living room.

For the hallway I would skip the crown. If what is there looks bad then I would just replace it as is with some nicer wood and a better job installing it. If you really want crown in the hallway then go with something like Greg linked to at each doorway. But you will still have the narrow trim above the doors. To me that would look to chopped up and I would just run a flat piece of wood all the way down the hallway.

[1987Commodore]

I ran the door casing from the baseboard to the ceiling, and left the original trim over the doors. If you have a table saw, you could rip some boards to the right width over the doors, and use trim blocks at the corners of the doors to make the transition between the casing, crown, and door header.
Then, your crown would butt against the block.