Kitchen Crown Molding

Back in December, the kitchen cupboards looked like this: 

The rips in the paper were so we could get to the stuff inside, since I didn't empty them out first and painting took longer than I thought it would. As usual. 

Last fall, after painting the kitchen I built a cupboard above the frig since I couldn't stand the thought of that much space being wasted. It got painted when I did the rest of the cupboards.

I meant to take a photo of what the kitchen has looked like since then, but apparently my subconscious wants to forget it since I didn't manage any photos.

This is what it looked like last week: walls painted almost to the ceiling, cupboard frames painted, no doors above the frig, and doors just barely reinstalled above the counter so I could make sure there was space for the crown molding. Yes, our kitchen cupboards have been doorless since December. It's annoying, but I've been working on other things and it wasn't at the top of my list of things to do.

Now it looks like this: the crown is finally up! I've had the pieces laying on the living room floor for months and they needed to make room for our new couches (pictures in a couple days!), so I stopped working on the upstairs bathrooms and tackled the crown. I still need to putty, caulk, and paint, but already it looks so much better.

 

The crown molding extends around the whole kitchen, but I didn't take photos of that section since plain crown just isn't that interesting :)  One of my friends was gracious enough to come on a hot day and help with the long pieces, which made the whole project much easier and faster. Short pieces are easy to do with just two hands, but you need four hands for the longer pieces.

I've done crown molding before and never liked the process of figuring out the angles, so awhile ago I bought a Kreg Crown Pro after seeing it given glowing reviews by other bloggers. Wow! Such a difference! As long as you make sure all your measurements and settings are correct, your cuts turn out great. Totally worth the money since you don't end up wasting molding trying to get the angles right (not that I'm speaking from past experience, or anything.....).

I still haven't finished painting the doors, so they'll have to come back down, but it was good to get an idea of the effect. I think we'll save up for a stainless steel microwave- the white one we have is looking really dingy next to the white cupboards. 

There's more to do, of course, but slowly I'm getting the last projects around the house finished.