Searching for crown moulding.

March 9, 2006 5:01 PM

ISO crown moulding for bathroom to match rest of house. D/D free, must love dogs.

I'm looking for any pointers anybody might have on finding crown moulding that matches or closely approximates our existing stuff. We got a quote for custom moulding that worked out to about $10/foot. Is that reasonable? Are there any good online places for custom moulding? What about brick&mortar stores in and around the SF Bay Area that you can recommend? Failing that, what about a company that stocks many many different styles? Most places we've been able to find will only have a handful of profiles. Help!

posted by drewbeck to home & garden (7 comments total)

How custom are we talking? Do you have photos?
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:08 PM on March 9, 2006

What do you mean how custom? I haven't been able to find anything that matches what we have; it's not an ornate design by any means, but it doesn't seem standard either. I can post photos l8r, if it'll help.
posted by drewbeck at 5:14 PM on March 9, 2006

Could you post a picture? You can get a rough match for a lot of old moldings by building it up from smaller pieces. Especially if you are painting it, no one will notice that it is slightly off from the rest of the house. Another possibility is home salvage places, they often have huge stacks of salvaged trim work. It is a crap shoot, but you may find an exact match, and they won't even charge you extra for the eight layers of lead paint on the molding.

As to the custom, the price sounds pretty fair.
posted by LarryC at 5:35 PM on March 9, 2006

In San Francisco, there are two places I know of that have big selections of moulding profiles ready-made: Beronio Lumber (pdf catalog here) and San Francisco Victoriana (HTML catalog here). SFV offers a broad range of styles, not just Victorian.

Truitt & White in Berkeley is supposed to be good, too.

In our home, we've customized moulding for a few rooms by altering and/or combining off-the-shelf moulding to create what we like -- the way LarrryC suggests. With the right tools, it's fairly easy for a carpenter to reduce the thickness or the width of any moulding. The pieces can then be used in their new form, or you can lay one on top of another. The parts can be assembled on the wall or glued together before being installed.

I find it helpful to trace or draw the mouldings on paper and then erase or snip away the parts I want planed or cut off. I draw them life-sized, and then put the paper shapes together like blocks. When I have something I like, I get 10-inch free samples from Beronio or SFV, and the carpenter alters/assembles them.
posted by wryly at 6:58 PM on March 9, 2006

We got a quote for custom moulding that worked out to about $10/foot

Which implies that it is fair, and you aren't buying much of it. Custom moulding involves making a tool to plane a board into the shape of the molding. That's the big fixed cost. The rest is time and materials -- there's always a minimum time unit, and materials are what they are.

Is this moulding common throughout your house? If so, and if you like it, I'd seriously suggest, if you do go custom, buying many more feet of it than you currently needs. The setup and die charges are the big part, if you triple your order, you might find that your paying closer to $5/foot -- and you'll have a stockpile for the future.

If you only buy what you need now, and you need more later, you'll be paying the same amount. Plus, if you ever sell the place, you can point out the custom moulding, and not that you have spare moulding in the basement, so they don't have to worry about finding more.
posted by eriko at 5:31 AM on March 10, 2006

I presume this is an older house? You might have luck looking at a "re-building" center or some such place. (You know, windows, porcelain fixtures, casework, doors and windows salvaged from demoliton/remodeling projects) Longer runs of molding often end up there, and if it will be painted, the old nail holes can be easily filled and concealed. Wood filler if it will be clear-sealed.

Of course, if you value your time highly and don't want to spend the next 7 weekend searching warehouses, it may be worthwhile to go and get a custom profile ground to match your existing.
posted by misterbrandt at 5:16 PM on March 10, 2006

So I found the hott local place for it, if anybody happens to run across this thread in the future. They're in Oakland and, so far, have been super nice:

White Brothers Mill
posted by drewbeck at 12:05 PM on May 3, 2006