Crown molding in the Kitchen

Ah, the wonderful world of the 22 and 1/2 degree angle… When we put our kitchen in, we did not put soffets over the cabinets. I don’t know, I never did like the way that looked. It also seemed like a lot of work, or rather a lot more work. The end result was that the kitchen looked nice, but the tops of the cabinets looked a little plain.

Kitchen Cabinets before crown molding

A few weeks ago I had the idea of putting some crown molding around the tops of the kitchen cabinets. Spruce things up a little bit. Then, I thought, why not cover the tops of the cabinets with some pine and make the two sets of cabinets join over the sink with a shelf. And then I though, hey, I should put a light in over the sink, I could fish the wires through the insulation filled wall. Nah, I don’t need a light over the sink.

But I did do the other things. Yesterday I went to Lowes with my daughter and bought the crown molding and 1 X 10 pine boards. Unfortunately, the cabinets are 12 1/2 inches wide, so no combination of dimensional lumber would fit that width, so I had to rip a board into narrow strips to fill in the 2 3/4 inch gap. I attached the pine to the top of the cabinet with 1 5/8 inch screws and large fender washers.

This is the section of the house that was jacked up to replace the sill and the flooring system. Needless to say, there are no 90 degree angles, so some custom fitting of the pine boards was needed. Basically, it looks like the wall has a 1/8 inch bulge in the middle, near the window. I used the planner to take that much off and fooled around with it some, eventually I got everything to fit.

Now for the fun part, cutting the crown molding. Jay did a good “How to cut crown molding post” a few months ago. That has some good reference material, if you are looking for a how to post. This is more like a here is something I did post. This is a good “How to cut crown molding website” if you really have some hard corners to cut.

Kitchen cabinets after crown molding

I started off laying the molding flat on the miter saw and using the 31.5 degree miter/33.9 degree bevel settings. This worked great for the outside 90 degree angles. Then I came to the two inside 45 degree angles and things went down hill. I got caught up in some online chart that gave me a 16.32 degree miter/15.7 degree bevel. That didn’t work. Finally, after confirming that the angle really was 45 degrees (I began to have doubts) with my digital protractor, I put the crown molding in the miter saw exactly as it was going to be attached to the cabinet and used a 22.5 degree cut (1/2 of 45 degrees). It was a little difficult to hold it exactly there, so I used a small clamp. That did the trick.

Kitchen corner cabinet before crown molding

Kitchen corner cabinet with crown molding

All and all, I like the way it looks. When spring comes and I can open a few windows, I will finish it off to match the rest of the kitchen cabinets.

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