| Issue #31, October 27, 2006 |
The King Of Trim
Would you like to add some interest to an otherwise boring room? Would you like to be able to create the illusion of height or depth? Maybe you want to camouflage irregular walls, break the monotony of a never-ending hallway, or add an interesting element to your bedroom. Well, all this can be done with crown mouldings.
Crown mouldings encapsulate a large family of mouldings that are designed to gracefully flare out to a finished top edge and are generally used for capping walls, pilasters, and cabinets. They are used extensively in the creation of interior and exterior cornice assemblies and door and window hoods. In recent times, crown mouldings have generally made their appearance as mostly-decorated plaster or wooden trim where walls meet ceilings.
Nothing adds warmth to a room like the softening of angles; crown moulding is the decorative trim used to transition from wall to ceiling, adding a subtle elegance to any room. Choosing a crown moulding is as important as choosing a frame for an expensive painting. If it is too big or gaudy in relation to your home design, it becomes the focus of attention. If it is too small or simple, it can look cheap thus cheapening what it frames. In a home – the largest single purchase of your life – this is obviously not ideal. Trim is so important, in fact, that often people choose to go with custom-made crown mouldings in order to settle on the right look to frame their home design, or to match their own personal style.
There is practically an unlimited variety of decorative moulding styles. The ogee, a simple s-shaped, reverse-curve profile, and the cove moulding, a simple, concave trim, are among the most understated. On the other end of the spectrum are trims like the egg-and-dart (a line of small bulbs cast along the center), the rose/vine-crown (roses and vines consume the trim), and the dentil crown (the bottom edge distinguished by equidistant squares.) Each of these decorative trims can be the perfect fit for the right home design. And if you don’t find what you want, or if you want to mimic a particular trim on a piece of furnitiure, or a trim design of your own, there are many craftsmen who can help you design a custom crown moulding.
Mouldings are made from several different materials. Solid woods such as pine, maple, oak and wild cherry are always in style; hardwoods being the most expensive and the most beautiful when stained. If you do indeed plan to stain them, choose light-colored wooden mouldings. If you plan on painting your mouldings, take advantage of the lower-priced knotty and joined-wood mouldings. Choose stained or varnished knotty pine moulding for a rustic effect. In your choices here, budget is often the most important consideration.
Pine-fibre mouldings are another economical alternative, suitable for jobs that do not require the grain of the wood to show. Pine fibre mouldings must be painted. A finishing coat or a layer of white paper will give them a smooth opaque finish. Pine fibre mouldings are very rigid and require the use of a gun-tacker.
Polyurethane or vinyl (PVC) mouldings often provide good solutions to particularly difficult installation problems. Synthetic mouldings allow for curves that are impossible to achieve with wood. While composite crown moulding is becoming a regular feature in most homes, because of its cost and lifetime, it is recognizably not wood. On the other side, an oak moulding can look out of place if the furniture and other décor do not match the elegance that this type of moulding can bring to a room. For these reasons, interior designers with a keen eye can often be very helpful in matching a crown moulding to your home design.
Crown moulding is reasonably easy to install. The real trick is in choosing the right design, or purchasing a custom-made crown mould, and making sure it is cut at the angle you desire. From there, it is a simple matter of nailing the trim into place and applying the desired treatment. While you can certainly do the trim yourself, the cost of installation is often not much, since it is a quick, though detail-oriented and skill-required, task. And, since the real purpose of a crown moulding is to bring a bit of elegance and grace to your interior design, it pays to do it right.
–Frank McChristian
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