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That crown molding job in a 1920s house taught me patience
I was trimming out a living room in a fixer-upper in Portland last spring and the walls were out of square by a full inch. My first cut was off by 15 degrees and I ended up scrapping almost $80 worth of poplar before I figured out I needed to scribe each piece individually. Has anyone else had to trash a pile of wood on an old house job just to learn the hard way?
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the_adam15d ago
Huh, see I actually go the opposite way on old houses like that. I've done a few 1920s bungalows here in Buffalo and coping never seemed to save me much grief when the walls are that far out. The problem was if the wall bows in the middle of a long run, even a coped joint can open up on you because the back of the crown isn't sitting flush. I'd rather just accept that I'm gonna waste some wood, cut everything a little long, and scribe it from the ceiling down with a block plane. That first poplar scrap pile hurts but after you do it twice you start keeping a sharp pencil and a contour gauge handy for every corner. Those old houses don't care about your saw settings, they just laugh at you.
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