Carpentry, item 01
Crown Molding, Coped to Fit a Room That Isn't Square
Old houses move with the seasons, and a mitered corner opens with them. The Renaissance Handyman copes joints instead of mitering wherever the wall calls for it, then matches trim, door frames and decorative moulding as one package so an added run reads as original to the house.
Chapter 01
Old houses do not have square corners
A mitered corner is two pieces of molding cut at matching angles and set together, and it looks perfect on the day it goes up. The trouble starts once the house breathes through a shoreline humidity swing and that joint opens a hairline gap that only gets wider. Coping cuts one piece to the profile of the other so the two pieces fit into each other rather than against each other, and that fit holds through the seasonal movement a mitered corner cannot absorb.
We choose coping or mitering wall by wall, not as a blanket rule, because not every corner in an older home is actually out of square by the same amount.
Painted door casing and baseboard trim against wide-plank flooring in a renovated interior
Reading the room before the first cut
A ceiling that drops across a run, or a wall with a slight bow, will show up in molding before it shows up anywhere else in the room, because molding is a straight line drawn against a surface that is rarely perfectly straight. We read the wall and ceiling line before a single cut gets made, and plan the run so the eye lands where it's supposed to instead of on a gap.
That read also decides where a seam falls on a long wall, so a splice sits in the shadow line instead of at eye level.
Trim, door frames and moulding as one package
Crown molding, door frames and decorative trim are the three items on this part of the list, and we treat them as one package rather than three separate visits. Matching the profile across all three is what makes an added run of crown molding read as if it was original to the house, instead of a later addition bolted onto an untouched doorway.
Filling, caulking and the paint-ready handoff
Nail holes get filled and seams get caulked, and the run is left paint-ready rather than paint-finished, since most homeowners already have a painter or a color in mind. We walk the finished run with you before we call the job done, so any gap or seam gets caught while we're still on site, not after the paint goes on.
The Renaissance Handyman. Free estimates, over 20 years of experience. Call 203-278-7858.