I’m still working on trim in our home gym while I wait for the walnut lumber to arrive for the bathroom vanities and storage cabinet (which should be here tomorrow afternoon), and I keep going back and forth on whether I want to install crown molding in this room.
It seems like a natural “yes” to me just because I have crown molding in almost every other room/area of this house, including the hallway. The exceptions are the kitchen (because the really wide cased opening between the kitchen and breakfast room is too high with the trim and doesn’t leave enough room for crown molding above) the pantry (which has an angled ceiling and no room above the window trim) and my studio (which has a vaulted ceiling).
Other than those three rooms, the rest of the rooms have crown molding. Of the rooms in our house that have standard, flat, 8-foot ceilings, the kitchen is the only one without crown molding all around the room, but I did put crown molding at the top of the kitchen cabinets at the ceiling.
So naturally, I planned to put crown molding in the home gym as well. In fact, I purchased it a while back, when I purchased all of the rest of the trim for the home gym and bathroom, and it’s been stacked on the floor with all of the rest of the trim just waiting to be installed.
But I’m hesitant to install crown molding in this room for one reason — the WALLS! I went to great lengths to pick out the perfect (for me) paint colors, consider the perfect order and arrangement, and then actually paint all of those stripes.
And then, because I’m me and I can’t leave windows fabric-free, I purchased some really pretty sheers for the windows. Obviously, I’m going to wait until all of the trim is finished before I hang them, but I did unpackage on of them and they’re kind of a substantial sheer fabric. So they’re sheer, but not too sheer.
So combine that with the fact that I always hang my curtains high and wide, with the curtain rod brackets just under the crown molding, and what I end up with is whole stripes of color being covered up. I did a quick mock up to show you what I’m talking about…
So I honestly can’t decide if having full stripes of color covered up is going to be a big deal to me or not. If I forgo the crown molding in this room, and keep the curtain rod in the same place (just about four inches from the ceiling), then at least there’s a tiny peek of al of the colors above the curtain rods. So none of the colors are completely skipped or covered up.
When I painted these walls, I didn’t take great care to paint the stripes perfectly where they met the ceiling. So either way, it’s going to take time to get a finished look. I’ll either have to go back and touch up the paint along the ceiling, or I’ll have to install crown molding and do all of that finishing work. So leaving the crown molding off isn’t going to save time. The time issue isn’t even a factor here.
The only factor is whether or not I want whole stripes of color covered up, which is what would happen with crown molding, or if I want to leave just a few inches of color peeking out above the curtain rod, which would mean leaving off the crown molding.
I know it seems like a small detail, but it’s these small details that I wrestle over. Those small details all add up! So what are your thoughts? Add the crown and be okay with whole stripes of color being covered up around three windows? Or leave the crown off so that all of the colors can peek out above the curtain rods? (Edit: I’ve considered all of the window covering options, and I chose the sheer curtains. Those aren’t optional at this point. I’m very excited about them. ? )
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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