It seems like all of the moldings used in this house are straight - square moldings, and they're ALL made of mahogany wood (CHEAP) and stained a dark color.

The ceiling 'beams' are no different they are 'H' shaped and were made from 3 flat pieces of lumber. The beams can not be removed because there is an expansion joint between the roof panels behind them . So what to do with them during the overhaul of the house?

The best solution we came up with was to bury them in moldings as part of the process of updating all of the trim in the house. (We had previously replaced all of the base boards and window - door casings)

The cathedral ceilings in ALL of the rooms complicates the process of installing trim and the outside corners in three of the rooms makes it necessary to use 'pendants' to trim the corners of the room. So why not carry the pendant style throughout the project. Additionally because we are using two different sized crown molding, one down the sides of the 'beams' and a second style around the outside of the room, we need something to make the transition from the crown on the beams to the crown on the walls.

NOTE: If you click on any of the photos themselves (in any view) you can get the full sized original photo to display. (shareaproject shows a appropriately scaled photo, but it retains the original hires photo if you want to view it.)

Depending on your browser it may still shrink the picture to fit your display (Firefox shows the mouse cursor as a magnifying glass and if you click on the photo again, it will show it full scale with scroll bars.)

Here is an example of what we wound up with. Many thanks to Gary Katz's website for helping figure out how to pull all of this together:
http://www.garymkatz.com/TrimTechniques/making_pendents.html

There are MANY websites out there that talk about how to compound miter small pieces of crown to make the transition on a cathedral ceiling, but notice they are ONLY talking about INSIDE corners and they don't talk about how to solve the outside corner problem.

The only way to solve the outside corner problem on a Cathedral ceiling is to use a pendant, so if we have to use them for the outside corners and also for the beams, why not carry them throughout the project?

I used Microsoft Visio many times to try and visualize how all of this fit together and to check dimensions and angles. This is an end-on diagram of the ceiling beams and molding build up around them.

When you are selecting moldings a catalog like this one: http://www.mouldingandmillwork.com/pdf/IND3829-Chicago%20ProfileGuide.pdf

is extremely helpful in deciding on what molding shapes to use. I had to go to our full service lumberyard to get all of my molding. The home improvement stores don't carry the variety, and especially the lengths I needed.

The beams in the living room are almost 16 feet long. I was able to find the WM 54 molding at the lumberyard in 16 foot lengths so I didn't have to splice the crown halfway up the side of a beam. One less joint to open and to make a splice like that is always a hassle.

Key to parts in the Picture (remember to click on the picture to enlarge it)

Brown is the original beam 1 3/4 x 4 3/8
Red is the 1/4 Inch MDF cover we machined
Blue is WM 54 - 2 1/4 x 9/16 Pine Crown molding
White is our Baseboard Wm 620 - 4 1/4 x 9/16 flipped upside down.
Green is the WM 320 - 4 1/4 x 9/16 crown molding on the wall

I didn't even try to get a picture of all of the parts needed to finish this job. We installed this molding in 5 rooms. The dining room, living room, kitchen, foyer and one bedroom (other bedrooms are scheduled for remodeling later)

For those rooms we needed:
300 feet of WM 320 crown for the room perimeters

170 feet of WM 54 crown for beam sides and pendants

12 - 8 foot strips of 1/4 MDF custom machined to cover the beams

12 'beam' pendants (more on those later)

15 inside corner pendants

4 Outside corner pendants

Each of the 31 pendants is made of at least 6 separate pieces of moldings. There are over 250 (small) pieces that had to be cut, glued together and finished to make all of the pendants.

At one point I was cutting WM 54 crown pieces for returns on the pendants and figured out that I needed to cut 54 - 2 1/2 inch long pieces of crown. Can you say repetitive??

I'll kind of walk through this in the order in which we installed things and in some cases created the pieces.

The only non-standard 'molding' we used was the wide flat, bottom cover for the beams. We machined it from a 4 x 8 sheet of 1/4 inch MDF. Each piece of 'beam cover' is 4 3/8 inches wide. We routered a decorative edge on each 'beam cover' to 'make a molding' out of it. We used a 'classic groove forming' bit from MLCS to run along the edge:
http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/smarthtml/pages/bt_groov.html


All of our other moldings were pine or preprimed, we didn't have to worry as much about painting them. The MDF on the other handle swells when hit with Latex paint. so, we had to seal the MDF pieces with an oil based primer before we sanded and painted them.

This is a 'beam' pendant phase 1. These are made out of scrap pieces of the baseboard, WM 620, we used throughout our house. The base is flipped upside down and mounted as shown up against the ceiling.

These had to be dimensioned such that the 'front' (the side with the big notch in it) would fit OVER the beam and still have enough space on either side of the beam for a piece of WM 54 crown cut at 12 degrees (the angle of our cathedral ceiling) to fit. The front dimension ended up being 7 1/8 inches wide.

The 'sides' are dimensioned such that the larger 'perimeter' crown, WM 320, could land on it. The challenging part of figuring out these dimensions is that with a cathedral ceiling, you wind up with 'upper' and 'lower' pendants. At the outside wall of the room the angle from wall to ceiling is more than 90 degrees, an obtuse angle. And on the inside walls the angle is less than 90, an acute angle.

All of which leads to changes in how the 'perimeter' crown lands at the sides of the pendants. This will effect how 'tall' the pendants are. This is something you have to look out for when you're designing things. Make sure the 'perimeter' crown will always 'land' on the sides of the pendants irregardless of whether you are at an outside or inside wall.

The clamps in the photo are made by the Collins Tool Company (www.collinstool.com) and are EXTREMELY handy for all of these miter joints. I used Titebond molding & trim glue for all of the joints because it dries clear and is less noticeable if I mess up a joint than regular yellow glue.

This is the full buildup of the beam pendants.

Starting at the top of the picture, the build up is WM 620 baseboard, upside down, then WM 54 crown molding upside down and finally a piece of 1/4 by 1 1/8 inch flat molding to finish the piece off.

In the back of the pendant you can see that there are scrap pieces of 1/2 thick MDF glued in to provide a mount for the WM 54. We decided to reduce the height of the pendants slightly by putting the WM54 inside of the baseboard, instead of on top of it. This also provides some room for error in miters, etc.

You will also notice that this pendant is now notched on the sides as well as the front. The side notches provide clearance for the original 1 x 3 trim that runs around the perimeter of the room. (And, no, you can not take the 1x3 down. Its nailed in behind the ceiling beams. So unless you want to remove and then reinstall everything, just cover it up OK?)

Because these are 'lower' pendants, the top edge is cut at a 12 degree angle, if you look closely at the picture you will see that the 'top' is cut an angle. This is necessary so that the front edge of the pendant fits tight up against the ceiling. On the outside of the room, the back corner of the pendant hits the ceiling 1st and it prevents the pendant from fitting properly.

We saved the pieces we sawed off of the 'lower' pendants and glued them on top of the 'upper' pendants to help fill in the gap between the square pendant top and the sloping ceiling.

We attached these by nailing through the sides of the pendants into the beam (where the holes would be covered by the perimeter crown) with 2 1/2 inch 15 gauge 'DA' finish nails.

Once the beam pendants are installed at each end of the beam, we added the cover to the top of the beam. (insert in the photo.)

Of course sheet goods leaves you with only 8 foot lengths of stock so there is a seam in the middle of the beam 'cover'. We also cut the ends of the beam 'covers' at 12 degrees so that they fit tight against the pendants.

Once the beam pendants were installed, and the top of the beam covered, we installed WM 54 crown, its a small 2 1/4 x 9/16 crown, down both sides of the beam. We chose WM 54 because it has a 1 7/8 inch 'rise' when it is installed. That along with the 1/4 MDF cover lines up just right to enclose the space from the ceiling to the top of the beam and cover.

The next parts to install were the 'inside corner' pendants. And, yes we could have used the technique where you use a small piece of crown that is double bevel cut to make the corner: http://www.compoundmiter.com/images/cath4.jpg

But since we already have 'set the style' with the beam pendants, and we have 4 outside corners that MUST use a pendant, we thought that we would stay with that style. (Of course if you're looking for an excuse to buy that Makita 14 inch compound miter saw for $600, this could be it. As for me, my venerable 20 year old Delta 10 inch miter saw and my 50 year DEWALT Radial arm saw did the trick. Yes, I am a radial arm saw lover. No table saws in MY shop.)

Again, these are a built up of baseboard, then WM54 crown and finally 1/4 by 1 1/8 inch flat stock. Instead of cutting small MDF scraps for the Crown to attach to, we just cut 2 3/8 square blocks of MDF and glued them in place.

This corner is a 'lower' pendant and has its top edge cut to 12 degrees to match the ceiling slope, the one on the right shows the angle. The left one has the notches cut in it to make room for the 1 x 3 that runs the perimeter of the room.

Here's that 'lower' inside pendant installed. Sorry I got the crown installed before I got the camera out.

One of the WONDERFUL things about these old Wausau houses from the 1970's is that they have these square moldings everywhere. Notice the molding in the corner coming up under the corner pendant.

Here are the outside pendants. And, yes compared to the ones Gary Katz uses, these are HUGE. A coupe of reasons for that.

1. The width of these matches the width of the beam pendants. (The corner pendants are the same depth as the beam pendants) So we're continuing the same proportions.

2. The outside corners in the rooms also have lovely corner molding on them and we need that flat area on the bottom of the pendant to butt the corner moldings up to .

Because these wrap around the corner and have to accommodate the angle of the ceiling, they are actually made of 5 1/4" inch tall baseboard instead of our usual 4 1/4 base. You can just make out in the lower left of the photo the difference in the width of the baseboard. The 'short' or down hill side of the pendant is made of the 4 1/4" tall base and the remaining 3 sides are made of 5 1/4" tall baseboard.

(As it turns out, even the 5 1/4" tall base wasn't tall enough. We had to add another 5/8 inch block to the upper most edge to fit up to the ceiling. Notice the white painted strip at the upper right in the photo.)

In part because the outside corner pendants are SOO large, we have to add blocks behind them so we have something to nail into to hold the pendants in place.

And, yes that is a part of beam pendant in the picture. This outside corner turned into an interesting project when we started to install the outside corner.

Same corner. Please ignore the blue painter tape, I need to touch up the paint a little now that they're installed.

When we started to install the outside corner here, we discovered that the beam pendant was less than an inch away from the corner pendant. There was NO WAY we could have stuffed a short piece of crown in between the corner and the beam to 'continue' the pattern, so what to do....

Well, we enlarged the one side of the pendant such that it butts right up against the beam pendant and installed it.

Here you can also see how the ceiling slope affects the height of the outside pendants. On the 'down' side of the pendant we had to maintain the 4 1/4 height so that the corner matched the rest of the project. But the 'top' or uphill side of the pendant is over 6 inches high.

Here is a photo of one of the outside corner pendants with the molding running up under it. You can also see part of the wall and a ceiling beam in the photo as well.

Here is a look at the completed system with two of the four outside pendants in the foreground. This is looking from the living room down the short hallway into the Foyer. (the ceiling looks tall because the living room is sunken so, I am standing about 1 foot lower then in the next picture)

You can also see the ceiling beam and the crown on the far wall of the Foyer.

This photo is looking back into the living room from the foyer. You can see that 'challenging' corner in the upper left. Also the beam in the hallway, but also the beams in the living room and way off in the background is the crown on the far wall of the living room.

This is one of my 'this will look cool' ideas that actually worked out.

When we remodeled the kitchen we built the soffits over the cabinets with 'bullnose' corner bead on the drywall so that the front corner of the soffit is rounded. We have now installed the same crown we used everywhere else right on the edge of the bullnose to set off the soffit and the cathedral ceiling.

And yes those are indirect lights hidden behind the crown. More details on the next picture.

When we build the soffits, we pre-wired a circuit into both sides of the kitchen so that we could power up both sides at once. We are using one 18 foot long LED rope light per side of the kitchen and each is about 50 watts.

We also were concerned that with the crown only being nailed to the 'wall' at the bottom and not to the ceiling at the top, it might pull away. Also, the LED rope light would have lain clear down in the bottom of the space behind the crown, and probably wouldn't have been that great of light.

To correct this, we ripped a 1 x 3 to the same angle as the back of the crown and screwed the 1 x 3 to the wall about 2 3/4 inches up from the bottom edge of the crown.. Now we have this really nice shelf for the rope lights to sit on. We also have a 2nd spot to nail the crown onto. We also covered the 1 x 3 and the inside of the crown with aluminum duct sealing tape to make a reflector and it does actually give off more light that way.

OK, so how did we wire this? Well there are standard electrical boxes cut into the soffits just below the top edge of the crown (the boxes are installed on their sides. And are just out of sight.)

We tried to use an outlet and plug system, but the plugs on the rope lighting is too big to fit behind the crown. There is also a 5 amp fuse inline with the plug, I guess because these are indoor - outdoor lights.

What we finally did was to cut the plug ends off of the cords. Along with an automotive type inline fuse holder, we hardwired the whole thing. There is actually a special plug on the rope that mates with the cord so we could do the wiring, then install the crown and finally attach the rope lights.

We really like the look. The lights are great for when the kids aren't home yet, kind of like a 'night lite'