Walls and Ceilings - Crown Moulding Installation - Ceiling Not Flat

Hello All!

I've been installing crown moulding around my house, and after finally investing in a compound miter saw I've been having relatively good luck. I've just run into a problem, however, that I can't seem to get around.

The ceiling in one of the rooms in my house is not very flat. It seems to be as much as a half-inch out of flat at various points around the wall (or, rather, a couple of inches from the wall, which is where the crown would hit it).

A quarter-inch or half-inch seems like too big a gap to caulk and have it look good, and the crown is far to heavy to bend that much. I guess I could try to trim the molding or chisel the ceiling flat (it's sheetrock) where the molding would touch, but was hoping for a more elegant solution. Has anybody run across this before? :confused:

Thanks.

Hello & welcome to the forums.

If the ceiling isn't textured, this wouldn't be all that bad to fix. Use some thinned joint compound, (I would recommend using Lite mud for this, thin it with water until it's creamy) apply it with a wide drywall blade, in thin coats. With the gap being up to 1/2", it'll take several coats to build that up to where you have a true flat ceiling.

Now if this is a textured ceiling, you're going to have to scrape the old texture off before you can skim out the ceiling. Sounds like it was just a poor job of drywall finishing.

You are probably done by now but I would use the light weight patching stuff like thick whipped cream from red devil or custoum building products and apply it to the moulding before I put it up. Hold the piece up and mark where to put the stuff and how thick. Put the stuff on and put the piece up. Wipe off any exess. Obviously---- don't nail where the stuff is. You are done