Mission: Finish installing crown molding around the rest of the house (with the nursery done, we still had the guest room, the playroom, and the hallway to complete).
Status: Complete.
Thanks to the magic of the internet, a job that took us about two weeks on and off can be shown in a few seconds. Here’s the finished work.
After installing crown molding in Clara’s nursery, we were inspired to add molding to other main areas that were missing it. Our master bedroom already had crown, but the other bedrooms and one of the hallways did not, so we decided to make the look consistent throughout the home.
We finished the guest bedroom pictured above and Clara’s big girl room shown below.
We also completed the recently updated board-and-batten hallway that connects these spaces, which was particularly satisfying because it connects to another hallway that already had crown molding.
Although the installation took about five days of intermittent work, once we understood the process it became more physically tiring than mentally challenging—holding eight-foot boards overhead for multiple days will do that. Our total materials cost for all four areas (guest room, nursery, playroom, and hallway) was $218, including nails for the nail gun. That averages to about $54 per zone, with smaller areas like the hallway costing less than the larger rooms.
Photos don’t always show small finishing details well, but in person the difference is clear: each room looks more polished in a subtle, hard-to-describe way. Much of the molding was already installed when we filmed an updated house tour, but it hadn’t been painted yet. We finally got that done, which again involved a lot of overhead work, and the rooms now look finished. We used Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White in a semi-gloss finish for a clean, durable look.
We already published a photo tutorial covering the installation process, so for this phase of the project we created a video to make the steps easier to follow. Videos can be less intimidating than written tutorials because they show angles and movements that photos can’t always capture. In the video we go through measuring angles, cutting and fitting the boards, attaching molding, and caulking and finishing gaps, along with practical tips we learned along the way. The goal was to cover every step clearly so anyone who wants to tackle this can feel confident doing it themselves.
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And yes, during outdoor filming you might hear a very dramatic bird in the background—springtime brings all sorts of sound effects. It added a bit of unplanned character to the shoot.