Get Perfect Seams Joining Trim and Mouldings

welcome to the jobsite today I'm going to be showing you how you can join two pieces of crown molding this technique will also work on base molding or whatever kind of molding that you're trying to join we're actually be cutting this one on an angle the way we do our so I'll show you the wall that we got now this wall right here in this kitchen is right above the cabinet's and the reason we have a seam here is because this wall is longer than 16 foot if any of our walls are ever longer than 16 foot we have to join them with a seen anything 16 foot in under we don't have to have a seam on that because the pieces we buy from the supply house come in 16 foot so right here we've got a wall that's beyond 16 foot I'm going to use this this is a Bosch digital tape measure with the laser this just makes it easier that way I don't have to stretch out a tape measure this thing is very accurate down to the 32nd so I'm going to go ahead and get a reading on this see what we need to make this piece and then we'll go outside and cut that piece and I'll show you the technique that I use to get this to look right one other thing you want to keep in mind you'll notice right here above the cabinet's they usually have decorations there I'm going to put my seam over here rather than over there on that side of the wall because you want to put your seam in the most obscure area you don't want it to be right on a focal point when you come into a room you want it to be out of the way in a corner if he can do that so we always try to keep that in mind sometimes it's right in the middle of a wall and there's nothing you can do about that but thankfully the way I'm going to show you today it's going to be you shouldn't be able to see it anyways but just remember play in an obscure area so here's the Bosch laser tape measure shout out to jerod journal for giving me this he's a friend of mine so let's check this out so I'll just put it up against this wall turn on the laser in you can zoom in on that laser down there you'll see that's where it's going to read right under that piece of ground down there so I'll hit the reading that's a big seam 289 inches in 17 30 seconds so we'll go outside and I'll show you my method to get this seam looking good so before I show you how I'm going to actually do it on the wall here I'm going to show you three options that you can use for a seam and I'm going to show you my favorite one I'll tell you what I like about mine and what I don't like about the other ones that some other people use but whatever works for you is is the way you need to go but the first one is going to be a 45 this is a 45-degree cut and this one has the same idea as the one we use where you don't want it to be just straight flush up like a butt joint this is a scarf joint and it's a better glue surface where I can put glue on here on both sides it's just better for that but I don't like it because it's such a long piece right here where the angle is that 45 that is just a lot more to work on so the next one I'll show you is the butt joint this is where it's just two pieces of molding joined together you put them like this straight - straight that one's okay I like it that this one more than that one because that one takes a lot more work as far as sanding if you're off a little bit but this one leg looser because it's at an angle and I feel like it doesn't grab as good with the glue and the one that we use in my favorite one is the 22 and 1/2 degree seam this one is less obscure it's not just a straight line like this one as a glue surface like the 45 but it doesn't drag all the way across the crown like the 45 with all that you're gonna have to sand so the one that I do is the 22 and a half degree scarf joint these are fine if that's what you want to do but from my experience and what I like to do 22 and 1/2 degree scarf joint for all the seams that we do so with that will we've got our measurement we'll go ahead and head outside and we can get this piece cut I'll show you how I measure it and how I cut it there's a certain way that I like to do it I'll show you that right now so here we are outside at the miter saw and I'm going to be using Dewalt miter saw crown stops if you want to learn more about these I have a video called the right way to cut crown molding or the easiest way to cut crown molding so this is definitely something that you're going to want to use to have good seams so you can throw your crown in there it can lock in there and all your cuts are exactly the same so next what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut that 45-degree angle on that far side of the kitchen the side opposite of the cabinet's so I'll go ahead and do that now so I got that that's that far side opposite the cabinet's now I'll take this piece without any measurement I'm not going to measure anything I'm going to go all the way as far as I can put it in I'm just going to chop off the end at 22 and a half degrees so now I've got my 45 on that end I got a twenty two and a half degree over here and then I'll go ahead and set this down now what I'm going to do is take this next full piece and just cut a twenty two and a half degree on that in so I can match these two up right here makes it a lot easier for measuring this now I can take that and just make sure it looks good right there and take my measurement so as long as I looked at here which it does I can take my measurement from this far end over here and then I'll be good to go I'll just with my tape measure on there and this makes it a lot easier where we cut this piece before we even glue it so I can cut this on the miter saw bring it back down here get it all ready for the seam glue it up put the backer piece on that I'll show you here in a minute and we don't have to worry about the seams snapping on us so we got that mark up now from here it's just another 45 so we're good to go on our length all we've got to do now is glue this together I'm going to put a backer piece on here which I'll show you that and we'll do that so I've got everything I need right here for the seam what you want to do is kind of just grab it we do ours out outside on the sidewalk so if there's any glue we can we're not inside on the floor but just make sure you're kind of on a level spot on the sidewalk or wherever you're at that way before you glue it you know if you're on some uneven surface you're not going to be able to get that to match up good so just make sure you're good there and then I'll take the glue and I'll put the glue actually on the smaller piece even this even though this is the smaller piece this is still a good 7 8 foot piece so [Music] I'll kind of run it now [Music] like this this is that CA glue we always use on just about everything if you've been watching is just saying your first rodeo you already know how I feel about this and some of us driven over that's okay I want more way more than less and I'll activate it and then quickly bring it into position and you've still got a little bit of time so that's pretty good right there so now that that glue is set what you want to keep in mind when you're picking these seams up is you want to make sure that you lift them like this so that way and you see how strong that glue is that actually ripped off a little bit of the concrete so you don't want to lift up the the seam where it could put stress stress on it you want to lift it up vertically like this so with that I'll flip this on its face and there's a little bit of concrete there but that's okay what I'm going to do here this is a piece of crown and I'm going to put this right here this is a piece of this crown that I cut off you can use anything a scrap piece of wood whatever you've got and I'm going to glue this right here so what I'll do is I'll Center it like that I'll trace it out just roughly this isn't this doesn't have to be exact obviously nobody's going to see this and with that I'll fill in that box that I traced with a glue a lot of glue this is going to be a safety seal this will give you some peace of mind down the road to that it's not going to split on the customer and then with that what I'll do is I'll activate the other side heavily activate it because there's a lot of glue there and maybe even activate that a little bit and then quickly push on it try to keep it in your square it's all going to squeeze out but that's okay this is like welding would just keep your hands away from it so put a lot of pressure on it and then just weld it on there swift the activator and it'll set up good and keep in mind this make sure this piece is small enough that it doesn't mess with your flat side of your crown see how my pencil is flat right there that right there represents the wall of the wall right there and then this side represents the ceiling this method does not work on vaults you can't use a back piece like this on vaults you just got a glue your seam and make sure it's good to go so now that that's all dry I'll flip it back over on its face early on its back excuse me and then I can really get a feel for what I need to sand and there's a little bit right here that I'll stand right there down here is pretty good and I'll take care of that right now so now that I'm to this point what I'm going to do is start with an 80 grit if this if it's not that bad you could probably start with like 120 or something but I'm just going to start with 80 I just like to knock it down pretty good and you'll get to see I'm going to make this all pretty much come back to the MDF that MDF color and you want to keep it uniform you don't want to put like a lot of pressure just right here where it's you know you want to kind of keep it pretty good about six inches on each side of the seam and you can actually see how that primer is still there that means there's a heavy lip right there so I want that to all look like that MDF color you can see they're kind of starting to become one right here that color primer is disappearing one thing you want to keep in mind especially when you're coming around like these coves in this detail is you don't want to knock that that edge down they want to go with it make sure that you're not going to take away the detail because what you'll end up doing is making they actually look worse than just if it was a seam so now that I'm home pretty much to that color I've got all the primer off it's smooth to my hand you can see how it looks like one piece now what I'll do is I'll switch from the 80 to a 220 and this just makes it where it's not as coarse as the 80 because the 80 leaves it really really rough so I'll just going to go over it lightly with the 220 and this is just to make it more of a fine finish than that and you'll see even though my seam is right here I don't know if you can really pick that up with the camera but even though the seams right there I didn't just stand right there send it about 4 inches on each side four to six inches that way it's not just a dent it kind of flows evenly and I like that right there that's pretty smooth she was just a little more right here that should do it so I've got all this dust I'm just going to take this tap it a few times and get rid of all that so what you're going to need for the final step is some we use this DAP dry Dex spackling this is for like holes in your wall we use this actually for filling nail holes too and this is a great nail hole filler as opposed to caulking whereas caulking will just shrink and it'll show all the holes and gaps this actually is the best thing it doesn't shrink as it dries so I'm going to use this to kind of float this out you're going to need something like this like a spackle and a wet rag and the best way to think about this would be if you've ever done any joint compound on drywall this would be very similar to what you're trying to do you're trying to hide that and kind of fill in what you sand it off and it's very light it doesn't have to be you know a lot of spackle on here because again you'll just make the seam look worse than what it would have originally look so I just take something like this two fingers and kind of just spread it out across evenly just like that it doesn't have to look pretty that's why we have the wet rag we use that here in a minute just kind of fill in every where you sand it off just lightly it doesn't have to be just glob down there but just make sure you got even coverage all the way across and again when you get into these grooves you don't want to just just glob it in there because your goal is to make this look as seamless as possible obviously so I'm going to put some in there and I'll take it out with my finger now so that's a good amount right there a lot most of this is going to come off this is just kind of floating it out just make sure you're evenly everywhere about like that that's good now I've got a wet rag here and I'll kind of just lightly glaze this over like this make it even I'm just kind of filling it back in and you'll notice how when I wipe that rag across it leaves a kind of a grooved surface that's okay we're going to let that dry like that you've got some good sunlight out here today we'll let that dry and that will all get sanded flush now what I'm going to do there's a groove right here in the crown I'm just going to take my fingernail force it in there get all that out of there with my fingernail and that right there is good to go for the seam that seam will not be visible to somebody I've even had challenges where we've challenged people to try to find our seams and they couldn't find them so this technique works and once we have this once this is dry I'll lightly sand it again and we'll put this piece in so I'll show you how I sand it once this is dry here in a second so you'll notice now that the pink the pink spackle that I put on here is white so that means that it's ready to sand it's already dry and I'm going to take some 220 regular sand paper you could also use a sanding sponge if you want to I'm just going to take this and just lightly knock down those grooves there's a there's some grooves here they were left behind from the wet rag and I'm just going to knock those down once all those are smooth we'll go ahead and be ready to put this in very lightly I'm kind of not even really applying pressure just letting my hands glaze over the top of it so I can knock down this groove knock that does stuff and that seam right there I know where it is but I really can't even find it just looking at it right here and then you can just imagine whatever it's it's painted nobody's going to be able to find this so that's pretty much how you do is see that's how we do it and we've never had any issues so all that we got to do now is install this piece just keep in mind whenever you're installing it you want to lift it like this do not especially a seam this is like an eight-foot seam over here you know this is a 24 foot piece now you know you want to lift it up you want to lift it up like this and then carry it in the house you don't want to lift it up like this because it's going to snap so we'll go ahead and do that now I'll break it we might have to go out that door out that door this is our snap in technique so as you can see these seam is right here above this cabinet space very obscure area all that I got to do now is maybe a little bit more light sanding filling these nail holes with special and then just sand it alright excuse me just paint once we paint this no one will ever even know they'll wonder how they're you got this big 24 foot piece in here so anyways thanks for watching hope you learned something about how to make a seam with crown molding and trim and I'll catch you all next time you

Channel: Finish Carpentry TV

Views: 2,949,386

Keywords: seams, join, trim

Id: LaJTC5kRhkI

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2016