I’m excited for you to see how easy it is to create a modern crown moulding. We also had a builder issue that gave us problems. I’ll show you how we over came it so you’ll know what to do. This modern crown is less expensive then the traditional sculpted moulding and a lot easier to install.
I love the crown moulding we have in the main living spaces of our home. You can check out our entryway here and our dining kitchen area here. Our office is large and off our entry, close to the main living areas of our home.
I wanted to make the space a little more modern. I’m excited for you to follow along and see how we took our useful but boring office to modern and beautiful.
Office prep work
There wasn’t a lot of prep work for the office but it is important to find the studs in the walls and trusses in the ceiling so you have something to nail too. Monte used his stud finder to locate them. He also used a hammer and nail just to double check the stud finder reading. You will want to mark the wall and ceiling. Occasionally the stud finder would pick up a stud instead of a truss and give you a false reading. That’s why he would check by hammering a nail in and making sure he hit a stud.
He would mark a line on the wall and write an S for stud and a line on the ceiling with a T for truss. I did have to mark the stud line on the ceiling after because his markings were hidden once we held the crown moulding board up.
We had one wall along the ceiling where there were no trusses to hit so we used liquid nails and then used the air nailer shooting in on an angle to hold it in place until the liquid nails was secure which doesn’t take long.
Off to Home Depot for supplies
This modern crown moulding is pretty straight forward. You need to do a little figuring to decide how much product you need. The office has walls without juts so it was easy to figure out. At Home Depot they have a variety of lengths. You want to use as long of pieces as possible to minimize seams. Unfortunately each wall in our office were too long so we did have seams. Don’t worry we’ll show you how to make those seams invisible.
We used the 5″ along the wall and 3 1/2″ on the ceiling. You will need equal quantities of each board. If you installed the traditional sculpted crown moulding you would only buy one piece. Trust me, it is easier to install these two pieces then traditional sculpted moulding.
Modern Crown Moulding Prep Work
To simplify the final painting of the crown moulding I prep it before installation by giving it one coat of paint. Making sure to get the face of the board and both edges really well. Only one edge will be visible but it’s easier to paint them both and not worry about getting it turned the right direction.
This is so easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. I lay out some sheets in our garage place some scrap boards on the sheets so the painted crown is off the ground just a bit.
I use a roller and do the sides of the boards first then the face. If you do the face first you sometimes get gobs of paint from doing the sides. Since the face is the most important I like to do it last.
I us Dover White paint color it is the same as my baseboards and interior doors. I’ve also used it for my board and batten and shiplap walls. It is a Sherwin Williams color which our builder used. I buy my paint from Home Depot. The Behr Premium Plus paint from home depot is amazing. For trim I like to use semi gloss or satin finish.
An interesting challenge in our installation
Because we are running straight pieces it will go up really quick. We start by running the wall piece on all four walls. Easy and quick because the wall pieces are straight cuts and just pushed into the corners and butt together.
Let me take that back. It’s usually super easy to get it installed. We did run into a problem that we have never encountered before. We have installed this crown in our main living area, kitchen and dining area, entry and master bedroom. So we aren’t beginners at this but this was a first for us.
We had the 5″ board up on one wall and had moved to the next wall. As I was on one ladder and Monte on another we held up our board which happened to be on the only outside wall in the room. We couldn’t believe what we saw. There was no way to match the crown at the corner and run straight along the ceiling. We realized there was a huge bow in the ceiling from the roof trusses. We have experienced many imperfections that we could manually adjust by pushing on the boards just a little. This was so far out that we were running along the ceiling on one end and down more then an inch on the other end.
This is where things slowed down for a minute while we figured out what we were going to do. We made the decision go to the wall on the opposite side of the room. Hoping we didn’t have major issues with the other walls.
See how easy it is to install this modern crown moulding
After we got the wall pieces on the other three walls we were able to see it was running straight but there was no way of working with the straight 5″ board and the bowed ceiling. It was not going to match up.
Some of the fun with DIY is trouble shooting the problems and making it work. We knew we had some wiggle room because the ceiling piece would cover 3/4″ on the wall board. So we decided to rip 3/4″ off the board and line it up with the bottom off the installed boards on both walls. Crossing our fingers that we would only need to take off 3/4 of an inch.
To make sure we were running straight we snapped a chalk line. Previously we had used the ceiling as a guide. In hind sight I wish we would have used a level and marked it with a pencil instead of the chalk. It wiped off easily enough but was a little messy.
We had to pulled out the table saw and ripped 3/4″ off the trim then hang it level with the chalk line.
The bow in the ceiling isn’t noticeable to the naked eye so you don’t need to worry that it will look wonky once the crown moulding is installed.
Problem solved now to the finishing piece
After we got that problem solved we moved on to the ceiling pieces. The corners on the ceiling piece are cut at 45 degrees for a custom finish.
Monte would cut the corner at 45 and then trim the other edge square just so it was a clean straight cut. This is the easiest way to make your seams invisible.
The 45 degreed ceiling boards will match up to the wall boards seams so it looks really good.
Just to make sure everything was going to work ok we started with our troublesome wall. Thankfully it went up and covered well. We did have one end with a gap a little bigger then would be normal but we knew the caulking would fix that. Even though we had to work with a bowed ceiling it is still easy to make and create a modern crown moulding.
Because there were no trusses along one wall we used liquid nails to adhere a 3 1/2″ board to the ceiling.
Caulking, Sanding and Painting
After everything was installed we got busy filling the nail holes and caulking the seams. This takes as much time as hanging but makes a finished product you can be proud of.
Monte used a little hand tube of caulking for most of it but there were a couple places where the walls were so out of square that he used the caulking gun just to get more coverage.
You will probably go through at least one tube of hand held caulking for a room but it is so inexpensive. We usually pick up 3 or 4 tubes when were getting low.
Pro Tip
To take your caulking to the next level Monte sanded the seams a little before adding the caulk and then gave them a quick sanding after it dried. This is how you get the invisible seams and the custom finish.
It takes a little more time but so worth it in the end. We figured this out after doing other projects and realizing only filling didn’t get the result we wanted.
Painting and done
After the caulk is dry I come along and give everything a final coat of paint. This hides the nail holes that have been caulked and makes all the seams invisible.
I like to use a small foam roller. It gets into the corners so you don’t need to use a brush. Because I painted the edges before installation I don’t try to paint them against the ceiling or wall. If there is a mark I will use a small paint brush and touch it up.
Results
I love this easy to install modern crown moulding, it adds character to the room. Hopefully you were able to see how easy it was to make and create a modern crown moulding.
Be sure to tag me on Instagram. I’d love to see your modern crown moulding @makecreatecharm.
Decor to the Door
Here’s the link to my unique and fun collections of seasonal decor. I’d love it if you check it out.
