I have yet to do a ceiling job that didn’t turn into a major re-do. Often I get the paint, molding, tile, kitchen, bath, doors and all sorts of work and referrals from one ceiling job, done right. These photos show a recent job where the ceilings were 16 feet high in some areas and the skylight boxes as high as 20 feet. The home owner did not want a scaffold in the house so I did it all with ladders (this also sucks). The textured walls remain as they were. Each wall had a different texture. Due to the mold damage found in almost every room in the house, many areas of the drywall had to be removed and finished to match the existing. In spite of my misgivings about pulling this off, I surprised myself. Even I have a hard time seeing where the patch work was done. So I’m happy about that.

The happy eventuality of all this is a clean and updated look. In this home  3/4″ X 6-1/2″ square stock was used as base molding and 3/4″ X 3-1/2″ square stock became the casement around the doors and simple 4-5/8″ Colonial crown was used on the lower ceiligs and 6-1/4′ up high. Also on the exterior French doors I installed a wood valance right in the jamb to hide the window shade hardware. In the guest bedroom where there is a sliding glass door I built in a valance across the span of the room made of drywall and hand matched the texture of the existing walls. This way, the crown molding is installed directly on the valance, so that it looks like, it was always there as part of the walls and continues that clean look.

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I’ve included another job where I installed over 5,000 linear feet of triple crown molding. The majority of the triple crown molding was installed in step-like, tray ceilings.The trays go up 18-20 feet, in the center of the rooms. This was all installed and painted using a ladder and working alone. How did I do it?  Well, that’s an ancient Chinese secret, Grasshopper.

I also wanted to include a couple photos of the remodel of Jackie Gleason’s last residence where the new owner wanted to lose the retro look and create more of an old world look. This involved my building arches and 28 columns from scratch to create a square portico effect at the perimeter of the sunken living room. It also involved creating a coffered ceiling with triple crown molding. All of the crown molding was faux finished, with three different gold paints and then antiqued with amber poly-urethane. The posts of the columns were painted deep bronze (almost black) and also antiqued the same way. From the bottom of the living room floor to the top of the tray ceiling measured 18 feet. The columns measured 14 feet. On this job I cheated. I used a scaffold.

I’m also including some other photos of crown molding.

As a side note all of these jobs were also painted by me, as well.

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