When we bought our old house there was crown molding in the front rooms, most likely from the 1917 renovation.

As we were doing the demo on the house we had the contractor store the crown molding in the basement. Our thought was that in no time flat we would have the drywall in, the walls would be painted, and the old crown molding would go back up. Fast forward two years and finally, finally, the crown molding is being re-installed. When I painted the walls I left the tops unpainted since I knew the crown was going back in. This prompted over 18 months of questions from family and friends who wondered why I hadn’t finished painting. One thing this renovation has taught me is to never do unnecessary work, so there was no way I was spending the time to paint the tops of those walls when I knew it would be covered up. So we lived with this:

The first step in putting the crown back up was to remove the gigantic nails that were originally used to put the crown molding up. This required a bolt cutter since pulling them out would break the wood. It was actually kind of amazing to see the hand hewn angles for the corners and imagine how long trim work used to take before power tools like miter saws were invented. Then I had to clean years and years of grime off the wood before we carried it upstairs for the carpenter.

Once we held the crown up it didn’t look as impressive as I remembered. Maybe because at one time it was the nicest thing in the room. We decided that it needed a little…enhancement. So the old crown went up, and a new piece went under it. Then I decided it STILL needed more enhancement so a piece of dentil molding went on, along with a piece of quarter round on the bottom.

Now, I am happy. Well, until I get to spend days of my life painting all this crown molding. And, of course, my husband has now decided the living room is one shade too light and now that he looks at it, maybe, just maybe, the ceiling should be a different shade….