http://www.oddtoddstudios.com/jm10.html

I’m not sure if I said “thank you” enough for an excellent job from Just Moulding. 

I am very happy with the last project that we did with you. 

Thanks to Kevin and everybody.

 Panarat

A little note like that lets us know that we are doing the best job possible for all our customers.

 

The master of the house leads me into the kitchen so I can drop off my sales materials.  He then walks me to a large family room with 18 foot ceilings and says, “I want crown put in here.” 

I look up and see a two piece crown already in place and point it out to him. Wow, was he embarrassed!! I guess he never looked up and that was probably a good thing… The moulding was in poor shape, sagging down a bit, cracked caulk lines, plus there was a very poor joint between two pieces on the long wall. 

After looking around a bit, I determined his moulding looked “off” but it took me a moment to see why.  While the crowns were one, two, and three piece, the casings around the passages and doors were way too thin and narrow.  This was proved by holding a sample up to the dining room passageway. 

In extreme cases like this one, we call in not one of our design consultants but a licensed interior decorator/designer to work with the client.  A decorator in this instance will do more than just concentrate on trim.

On his side, Kevin went out to see a client in a town house.  The reason the wife called was that her husband had installed the moulding so poorly it was an embarrassment to her.  Kevin took pictures.  The gaps were a half inch in the middle of the room and the moulding was nailed flat against the wall.  It seems the husband watched a DIY video about installing crown.  Well, I could watch a video of brain surgery, but that doesn’t mean I have the skills to really do it.  And brain surgery is just like moulding, only easier.

“Creative Places for Moulding

The growth in popularity of moulding in interior design has generated some new thinking about possible moulding arrangements and locations. Moulding is no longer confined to crown moulding or baseboard. Innovations in materials and an increased desire by homeowners to enhance the appearance of their spaces without spending exorbitant amounts of money have created a market for creative moulding designs. Moulding is highly customizable and can be used in individual pieces or as a group to create unique effects. Incorporating color into a moulding set up has also become a popular and cost-efficient way of adding richness and sophistication to an interior space.

Consumers interested in adding creatively placed moulding should be aware of several factors related to the project. First, it is a good practice to consult a firm that will be using high-quality materials. Though cost for materials may be slightly higher than a competitor, moulding must be constructed well to withstand the settling of a residence and the constant pulls of gravity and bowing on a wall. Innovations in the materials available for moulding installations have opened up the field to projects not previously consistent from a durability standpoint. Second, contractors or home improvement companies with experience in ceiling and window fixtures are generally more proficient in moulding than a crew of painters or a general handyman.

Creative places for moulding range from the frame of a door and its jamb to window fixtures and wall panels. Moulding doesn’t necessarily have to frame an entire room. The eye may be drawn to moulding that is used to break up a wall into individual panels or sections, giving the appearance of a larger space. Decorative frame moulding formed on an interior wall affords and extremely clean, elegant appearance. Chair rails can be placed below moulding frames on the upper half of a wall to add another element of design and character. Some residences where wall space is broken up with frame moulding also have bead and board panels below the chair rail. Dimensions created by breaking up the space and any variations in color between the sections create excitement in an otherwise stale environment.

Wainscoting serves the purpose of frame moulding – complementing a chair rail and bead board – by combining the elements into panels that are placed directly onto the surface of a wall. Wainscoting is an excellent way to dress up tall, narrow interior spaces such as stairwells and hallways, but it is also commonly used to add texture and depth to larger rooms. Similar to the paneled appearance of frame moulding, wainscoting can be either painted to contrast the wall color or blend in to emphasize the effect of texture alone. Wainscoting has been used in interior design for centuries, and can be modified to complement nearly any architectural style.

Aside from the emphasis on decorative elements, many types of moulding also offer protection and functional benefits. Base boards are a good example of moulding intended to serve as a protective barrier that has grown into an opportunity for added design options. Long considered a necessary piece for the protection of a wall against kicks, skids and other scarring contact, base boards have evolved into customizable accessories. Adding a touch of design to base board moulding, when integrated in a room with crown moulding, creates a completely framed appearance that projects a finished feel.

Finishing moulding is important in the sense that walls and floors are not entirely unmovable. Additionally, for the more creative homeowner, finishing moulding creates opportunities for added style. Moulding can be painted, finished with varying wood tones or layered with decorative elements. Alternating shades or finishes on a coffered ceiling is a particularly effective way of creating depth and illusions in scale. Similarly, alternating finishes enhances the appearance of archway moulding or separating walls in a manner conducive to breaking up spaces.

Clearly defining individual sections within or between rooms is beneficial in the overall flow of a design scheme. One common example of changes in the pattern of moulding or a moulding finish to define separate spaces regularly exists between a combined kitchen and dinette area. Paint colors and a bold panel or wainscoting easily break one shared space into two distinct visual representations of functional rooms.

Using moulding in creative ways gives homeowners the opportunity to completely change the look and feel of a room. The days of every home only having crown moulding and base boards are long gone. With new and different types of moulding now available, the design possibilities are endless.

—

Kevin Wales is the founder and co-owner of Just Moulding. He has established efficiencies in daily operations and workflow to optimize the local business to help it become the premiere decorative trim installation company in the United States.”

You probably all felt the uncommon 3.6-magnitude earthquake that struck us this morning, unless you slept through it like President Obama!

This is a great time for us to remind you about our lifetime warranty. Just Moulding guarantees its interior moulding and trim carpentry for as long as your home is standing and transfers from one home owner to another.

Our terms are such that this guarantee is not restricted by changes in government, the weather, or by the migration routes of whales or birds….so neither by an earthquake!  No Restrictions, that’s it.

So if you happen to have any damage on your moulding following this morning’s earthquake, please don’t hesitate and give us a call right now, we’ll come as soon as we can to fix it.

More information about our lifetime warranty now!

Here’s how we make the perfect cope.  After the wood has been stored for at least a week, we place it on a very long and level cutting table.  Using our special saws (actually they are also very expensive), we cut THE PERFECT COPE every time.  You can see how we do it in this video.

We now make it easy for every DIY homeowner to install moulding in a room or two or three.  However, since we are not really in the business of selling retail, please excuse our limited offerings. These bundles are also not available at every location.

Each bundle contains four 16 foot lengths of moulding (with THE PERFECT COPE on one end). Come prepared to safely transport them home. We reserve the right to limit the following: Number of bundles, profiles available, hours of retail operation, credit card  sales to homeowners only, no cash, bundle sales only.
You can see the different profiles we offer here.

 If you are unhappy with your results, here’s how we can help you out: WE GIVE YOU ALL OF YOUR MONEY BACK “IF” you hire us at our usual rates to redo the same room.  We’ll even install brand new moulding of the same profile. All we ask is that you remove any moulding you installed so we do not have to charge you a demolition fee.

Once you have cut the wood, trimmed and joined it, it’s time to attach the moulding by nailing it to the wall. You can either use a hammer (which will be long and tedious) or a nail gun, as most DIY websites suggest, like Kaye Morris on eHow.
If you have not yet cut your finger, been smacked in the face with a piece of wood, or fallen of your ladder, way to go! The next step is trying to handle your nail gun…which is not the easiest task. Nail guns are notoriously easy to fire unintentionally or at the wrong place.

According to a Science Daily article of Apr. 16, 2007, the number of injuries from nail guns has almost doubled since 2001. And researchers said it’s that more and more do-it-yourselfers who are feeling the pain.  These kinds of injuries can be seen as bizarre accidents, but they actually occur fairly frequently, certainly among carpenters or construction workers, but also among “the weekend warriors”, as attorneys Perlmutter and Schuelke like to call them. They also observed a rise in nail guns injuries in April 2008, putting forward that the industry refused to adhere to a

Nail Gun used by Just Moulding

safe design because of a belief that sequential guns are safer and slower than contact guns. Contact nail guns fire when the trigger is pressed and the muzzle comes in contact with the target, while sequential nail guns require that the nose muzzle be in contact with the target before the trigger is pressed.
Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 65 to 69% of the injuries with contact guns would have been prevented if the gun being used was a sequential gun.  Today, it is highly recommended to purchase nail guns with a sequential-trip trigger or purchase kits to convert their current nail gun triggers to the safer type.

More recently, the blog of the Colorado Auto Accident Attorneys featured an article about nail gun accidents June 2, 2010. Some consider nail guns a relatively safe tool compared to power saws, while in reality they can be very powerful and shoot a sharp projectile at great velocities.

Most injuries caused by nail guns are to the hand, when the operator misses the intended target and hits the hand instead. Such an injury is typically minor, but can become serious. According to the articles, the different injuries that can be caused by nail guns include head and brain injury, eye, neck and back injury, fractures, nails imbedded in bones, soft tissue injuries, serious infection…and even death when the nail gun is so powerful that it can shoot a nail through a wall and strike an unaware bystander in another room.

Occasional nail gun users risk accidents and injuries to themselves and those around them, whereas pros like Just Moulding have the experience with all of the tools involved in moulding projects, from circular saws to nail guns. . Installing moulding is one home improvement project that should be left to the pros.  It can be both difficult and dangerous for “the weekend warrior”.

However, there is one home improvement company that is hired to do exactly that.  

Just Moulding cuts corners on every job.  Perfect, precise corners. And customers are pleased that they do.

Just Moulding is a niche concept in the in-home service industry segment.  The company offers custom design and installation of interior architectural mouldings such as crown, chair rail and wainscoting.   Just Moulding developed a special proprietary system for taking precise measurements, as almost every corner of every room is either slightly more or less than a perfect 90°. With Just Moulding’s unique methods, the majority of cutting and fabrication happens in their state-of-art workshops— and accurate measurements make the finished job look perfect, even if the walls and angles are not perfectly straight.

Installing crown moulding is a common DIY home improvement project.  But, it’s not as easy as it looks.  An anonymous writer gives very precise instructions on the eHow website.   But he does not forget to warn the end-user of undertaking such a project: “Installing crown molding is one of the most demanding and potentially frustrating projects a DIY’er can take on. You are working with walls that aren’t “true” and angles that are different at every corner. Installing crown molding demands accuracy and skill in measuring, cutting and installing. Mistakes are obvious and can be expensive. It is not a job for an inexperienced person.”

Founder Kevin Wales is a moulding expert and explains the challenges of installing moulding to customers.  “I often tell clients that even if they understand the math involved in a moulding project, they often don’t have the tools to measure precisely and cope the wood to ensure a perfect fit.  Because it’s all we do, we have the resources to do the job right, in less time and with less mess than a homeowner can do it alone.”

Just Moulding is based in Gaithersburg, MD and has locations in Washington, DC, Richmond, VA, and Boston MA.  For more information contact Claudine Rubin, Director of Marketing at 301-237-6922 or 877-377-8746, or visit www.justmoulding.com.

To see Just Moulding in action, check out this You Tube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajB1cfysYPQ

Nowadays, we see the development of more and more Do-It-Yourself (DIY) websites that people explore because they want to handle their home improvement themselves. If it seems that simple, why would you ever resort to a contractor? Well, here are some important points you might want to consider… 

First of all, you want to be sure that you have all the tools required for such a project: coping and miter saws, a sawhorse, measuring tapes, wood putty, finish nails, hammers, and scaffolding if you install crown moulding. You also need a nice work station, with plenty of light and power readily accessible.

Then you need the wood. And here you wonder: “Which wood? How much do I buy? How in the world am I going to fit 16 feet of moulding inside my minivan?”
When finally comes the time of cutting it, how to be sure that you are doing it properly? Is it the right angle? Is this bevel right?

So for weeks you struggle, live in a dusty and messy house, trying to put moulding together under the intrigued gaze of your spouse, and at the end you’re not even sure to be happy with your work.

Contributors to DIY articles themselves are walking on thin ice when they write about installing moulding.

An anonymous writer gives very precise instructions on the eHow website. But he does not forget to warn the end-user of undertaking such a project: “Installing crown molding is one of the most demanding and potentially frustrating projects a DIY’er can take on. You are working with walls that aren’t ‘true’ and angles that are different at every corner. Installing crown molding demands accuracy and skill in measuring, cutting and installing. Mistakes are obvious and can be expensive. It is not a job for an inexperienced person.”

Mag Ruffman, columnist for HomeEnvy, sums up the situation: “If ever you need an excuse to swear, install crown moulding in your home.” You can see her article here.

Precise Measurement by a Just Moulding worker

Some contractors split the difference by proposing to cut everything according to your measurements. But do you have the proper tools to measure exactly

every wall, and most importantly every angle? Most of the time, you don’t, as installing moulding requires using compound angles and being accurate with each one.

That’s why calling Just Moulding is a wise decision. We have the required devices. Our laser beams and digital protractors precisely measure every wall and angle in each room. When we are done, we have a digital blueprint of the entire work area, which we forward to our fabrication shop. Because cutting mouldings at various angles creates an enormous amount of saw dust, we do it in our shop and keep your home clean. All joints are machine-coped, which creates extremely tight joints, contrary to an imprecise handmade work. The next steps are the delivery and the installation –generally just a few hours.

(Our entire process is fully explained on our website.)

Our process allows you to sit back, relax, and enjoy your new moulding without a backache, any missing fingers and both eyes intact. Your house looks beautiful and it’s clean. And if you you’re unhappy, we’ll just come back to fix it at no charge.

So preserve your time and energy: don’t do it yourself. This is one home improvement that should be left to the pros. DIY crown molding is just not worth it.

By Maryann Haggerty
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 12, 2010

Look up toward the ceiling. You may notice that it’s ringed by a strip of crown molding along the top of the walls. This sometimes simple, sometimes ornate strip of architectural embellishment represents a mix of classical Greek aesthetics, Victorian sensibilities and modern ingenuity.

While molding has some utility — it can disguise a careless paint job or less-than-plumb surface — its main purpose is decorative. It’s available in a range of natural and man-made materials, and a zillion designs. Whether a house is built with it is a matter of style and cost. Adding it can be an inexpensive weekend project for a do-it-yourselfer, or a costly operation for a team of master craftsmen.

“It’s pretty magical when the moldings are done right,” said Brent Hull, who, as the author of “Traditional American Rooms: Celebrating Style, Craftsmanship, and Historic Woodwork,” is understandably enthusiastic. His Fort Worth company, Hull Historical, provides custom millwork for homes new and old, including Winterthur, the mansion-museum near Wilmington, Del. The size and placement of molding determines how a room’s size and shape are perceived, he argues.

At the base of a wall, you’ll find base molding separating wall and floor; other types of molding delineate windows, doors, fireplaces and more. (While the Brits and some manufacturers call it moulding, Americans generally spell it without the “U.”)

Period pieces

The aesthetics hark back to the ancient Greeks. The main parts of a Greek column — base, shaft, capital — were strictly defined, as were the layers of a well-designed building. The bands separating those layers are molding, not in strips of wood, but in stone. Look at Washington’s Greek Revival public buildings and you’ll see the designs that have inspired residential woodwork, such as the dentil trim — a series of rectangular blocks resembling teeth — along the cornice of the Supreme Court building.

The architectural styles popular in the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries each had characteristic molding, according to Chris Hofmann, whose Hofmann Joinery makes custom cabinetry and millwork in a Hanover, Md., shop stocked with antique and contemporary woodworking machines. Georgian-style homes, popular before about 1780, had “a lot of big, heavy molding.” Federal-style homes (1795-1820) had “sparse crown moldings.” Greek temples inspired the Greek Revival style that followed.

But it took the Victorians to go nuts with molding. Those 19th-century houses have “all the dripping leaf, overly ornate” styles of molding, Hofmann said.

Historians point out that much about Victorian life, including elaborately decorated houses, can be explained by the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. For instance, it took a steam-powered saw to economically produce the gingerbread that adorns Victorian exteriors. These advances also fostered a middle class that aspired to elegance.

Today, molding remains aspirational. Home shoppers like crown molding because it gives a sense of luxury to a home that otherwise might not feel luxurious, said Joseph Himali, principal broker at Best Address Real Estate in Northwest Washington.

Although molding is a plus for home buyers, it isn’t a must for home sellers, Himali said. “There will never be a time when the actual cost of crown molding will be covered in the eventual sale,” he said.

In addition, “It’s a rare, rare bird that will come into a house and not buy it because of lack of crown molding.”

In 2008, the National Association of Home Builders surveyed home shoppers and buyers to determine which features would affect their decisions. Twelve percent said crown molding was essential, 51 percent said it was desirable, 32 percent were indifferent and 5 percent said they didn’t want it.

At Smoot Lumber in Alexandria, both builders and homeowners buy custom millwork from a choice of hundreds of profiles, or designs. Speculative builders tend to buy relatively simple molding, according to Michael Brannon, who runs the mill shop at Smoot. The most popular is probably a 2 1/4-inch-wide colonial casing used around doors and windows. “It’s readily available; it’s pretty inexpensive. . . . If you saw it, you probably wouldn’t even notice it, it’s so universal,” he said.

But when people renovate or expand the region’s older houses, they often need to match existing woodwork, Brannon said. There are three or four profiles he regards as Capitol Hill styles, suitable for the older houses there, while houses in Adams Morgan or Cleveland Park require a more colonial style. Throughout the suburbs, neighborhoods built by the same builders, or even by the same construction crews, tend to have similar molding, he said.

Fancy molding need not come from a custom shop. For instance, White River of Fayetteville, Ark., makes more than 2,000 styles of carved or embellished hardwood moldings. “Even though you are seeing a lot of people saying, ‘Simpler, simpler, simpler,’ we’re still selling it every day,” said Joan Johnson, the company’s president.

“If people are in an area where ornamentation is established, it’s hard to build houses without it,” she said.

Choosing materials

When people plan to stain molding, they generally use solid pine, said Troy Dally, merchandising vice president for millwork at Lowe’s. Oak, maple and other hardwoods also have decorative possibilities; Hofmann generally uses solid poplar for his custom work, much of which is for designers or architects. Molding that will be painted is usually finger-jointed pine, Dally said; that is, a long strip made of shorter lengths jointed together. Many manufacturers also make molding from MDF, or medium-density fiberboard, a less expensive, engineered wood product.

Plastics are also available. Fypon Ltd. of Archbold, Ohio, makes fancy moldings of polyurethane. It’s lighter than wood and holds up to the elements, the company says. It can be more expensive per foot than wood, but installation requires less labor, so the company sells its products to builders as an economical means to impressive results. “Trim houses, not margins” is one slogan.

Fypon is marketing a miterless corner system, which allows its complex moldings to be installed without the carpenter having to perform tricky angled miter cuts or, for inside corners, coping joints. “I have it in my own dining room, and I absolutely love it,” retail product manager Tina Mealer said. “I used the miterless corners and did it myself.”

DIY angles

Is installing molding a do-it-yourself job? It depends on a homeowner’s skill levels and tools, said Johnson, of White River. A simple chair rail takes very little in the way of tools. Crown molding calls for the right saw and the patience to use it correctly when cutting fiddly corners — a little mistake can spoil a whole strip of molding. Especially in an older house, where straight lines and right angles are rare, installation can involve a lot of shimming, plumbing and caulking.

Nonetheless, many homeowners take on the job themselves. The molding aisle at Home Depot in Capitol Heights, for instance, stocks scores of options, in just about every material. Prices range from about 85 cents per linear foot to about $5 per linear foot. The cheapest materials look cheap up close but might not be obvious mounted nine feet up on the wall.

The store stocks plenty of corner blocks and other devices to help homeowners avoid those difficult joints. The chain also sells what it calls Perfect Cut molding, which has a two-sided profile that lets the weekend carpenter make just one cut, then turn the strip over and have two perfectly matched pieces, thus halving the chance of messing up.

At Lowe’s, a similar product is called Flip Face. Dally said molding can be a suitable project for beginners, especially those who have the patience to measure everything carefully. “Generally, we see that someone comes into a house, they already have baseboard and casing. The way they personalize the house is with crown molding. . . . We feel that customers don’t want their house to look like everyone else’s.”