Carpentry and Woodworking - Crown Mold Gaps

I'm a local handyman with a customer's new house punch list. The crown molding installed has gaps between the butt joints--maybe 1/8 inch or less--but visibly ugly. The customer wants a quick fix that doesn't require paint touch up--like white caulk. --Any other sugestions?

Yup, it is MDF and it was installed during a rainy period where the house was quite humid. Run across it all the time. About all you can do is apply white caulk and follow it with a wet sponge in the direction of the splice. That tends to float it pretty good. They may still want to touch up the gaps once the caulk is dry.
Good luck.

Larry

You mean it wasn't just lousy workmanship? --They didn't attend to acclimating the molding to humidity and temp? How does one prevent this?

Wether it's mdf or painted pine or similar, a butt joint will eventually show a gap, especially between long runs of molding. Hard to avoid. Scarf joints are a little more forgiving in terms of wood movement showing gaps.

You will probably need to paint over the gap, once it's filled. Unless you get lucky and the caulk matches real close. If not, hopefully you can match the paint, otherwise that will stick out too. Easier if it's just white, although I've seen a lot of different shades of white.

The workmanship was probably right on (with the exception of butt joints rather than scarf). I just finished a punch on a house that was built during our last rainy season. Besides the crown and base shrinking leaving gaps, once the sheetrock dried out every screw head popped. It was installed correctly, but with high humidity it was inevitable. The customer had been living in the house for about 3 months, so with the air and heat running, everything dried back to a normal ambient temperature. The house looked like a leopard when I got through (I don't paint).

Larry

I had a situation once where I caulked a joint that had shrunk. When the humidity returned all the caulk squeezed out! So, depending on the materials used, it can be an ongoing problem. :wall: