Hi Fred,

I feel your pain. I just got down off the ladder in
our family room where I am wrapping stained oak
crown around the entertainment center & brick
fireplace. About 35 ft of crown but in a dozen pieces,
with sloped ceilings (up & down) and uneven brick.
I work a couple hours a day (being retired!).
I have one last piece that I'm cursing at and trying again to get it
right: about 6 ft across the 11.5 ft high ceiling, then a short
slope down on the vaulted ceiling and around a corner - all this
where the vertical "wall" is actually brick which is very
uneven in some areas. Add to this that the drywall that butts
the fireplace has no wood behind it for the first few inches. This
is my 2nd go around with it.

I have been using some MDF crown for my test pieces
since I stained and partially finished the oak. When it
is all up I will fill the nail holes and wipe on one or
two more coats of poly.

I have done quite a bit of painted crown around the house
and for friends & relatives - all on normal (flat) ceilings.
I got pretty good at it & learned to cope pretty well. Caulk
always helped when necessary.

Really looks good when it's done right tho.

Lou

In article , Fred
wrote:

Thank God for caulk and paint.

Non of the inside or outside corners of my walls are true 90 degrees so
final results at the corners are a little off when mitering at 45 degrees.
Even off by 2 or 3 degrees will show up as out of alignment at the corners
where the baseboards don't meet exactly. I've tried coping for the first
time but it was a long process with trial errors before it looked ok -
forgot to take the coping saw with me, had to freehand on the TS. I had some
odd shaped walls also and had to divide the angle exactly by half using
trial and error or simple high school geometry as eyeballing it results in
disaster. After about four hundred feet of baseboards I'm getting the hang
of it so accurately is a must since a degree off here and a 1/16" off their
will show. So far this is only simple angles and I needed to resort to caulk
and paint.

Next crown moldings with compound angles - now I'll be really challenged
with those funky walls. I need to dust off my descriptive geometry book and
see if it helps. Is this where coping comes in play more than baseboards?