kgwlisa, thank you ever so. That is just the kind of inspiration I was hoping to find. It will make GC happy too! What an interesting ceiling. What is it?

It looks like a painted "tin" ceiling (or it could just be anaglypta paper to look like tin). I took the picture from a website that makes reproduction victorian woodwork (moulding, porch trim etc). It's from the website I linked.

Shirley,

My first choice would be to have the crown across the entire wall, both drywall and tile.

Second choice would have been to use a return technique as done in your photo, but I would have extended the crown a few more inches to the right so the bottom of the crown meets the wall/tile vertical line, and the crown returns into the tiled wall.

I'm not a big fan of terminating blocks, but that's simply my preference.

Question...your picture looks familiar. Is this the wall from a post a few months ago where the mud job was proud of the drywall so they padded it out by adding another thickness of drywall?

Mongo

Thanks for the suggestions, Mongo. No, it wasn't me with the proud drywall. However, I did make the suggestion to double the sheetrock to abutt the tile. GC rolled his eyes at that one. I would be MUCH more satisfied with your second choice. Would it be a lot of trouble to change it? Or will GC just roll his eyes?

It must be a cultural thing or maybe men are just deaf or hard of hearing. Everytime I post on GW it provokes a man to defy the specific instructions in my user name. Men just don't listen!

"My first choice would be to have the crown across the entire wall, both drywall and tile."

Mongo, I just reread your post. Did your first choice mean you would place crown molding over the existing tile? I was kidding about the listening thing, ya know.

I'd also prefer to run the crown over the tile (assuming that's not IN the shower and gonna get wet??). We had a similar problem with a/c vents too high to the ceiling in our living room. We coped the crown around it and caulked the gaps. You notice the crown is cut around the vent when you look for it, but because it's a continuous line of crown, you don't notice it. Stopping the crown short of the vent and picking it back up on the other side would be much more noticable, kinda like your crown that stops short of the tile, revealing that tiny bit of wall space.

I'd insist on fixing it. It'd bug the heck out of me every time I walked in the room. He can either run a new peice (preferred), or the cheaper method would be to cut a small peice to fit, nail it in, caulk the seams, and refit the endcap to the tile. Not a big deal at all IMO.

GC is going to butt the crown up to the tile. It may not be perfect but at this point I'm satisfied with that solution. Meanwhile I emailed the picture to the company (really neat) that kgwlisa suggested - Vintage Woodworks - and asked if they had anything to solve the problem.

Thank you for all your ideas. I'm so ready to hear the words, "It's finished."

Shirley (oops!),

Yes, my first choice would have been a continuous run of crown all the way across the top of the wall, across both the drywall and tile.

Extending it the few inches to the right? I'd pull down the piece up there and replace it with another of the proper length.

Re: "dontcallmeshirley", it's not that we're deaf or don't listen...it's just that with sports radio playing so loudly in the background, ESPN on TV, and a beer in each hand, we don;t multitask that well!

For crown inside a shower, I'll usually use urethane foam crown molding and paint it. Oil primer and either oil or latex paint top coat.

Mongo

It's alright if you can't hear, Mongo. What we love about you is you know what you're talking about when you say something! :-)

That said, if I were to wrap the molding around the shower it won't be on the same plane as the wall now. So how would you handle the transition?

Also, while I have your ear, I have another shoulda- coulda-woulda @&^%(*# poor planning situation. My 6" tiles are cut four corners to include 4 1" mosaic accent tiles but I did not provide enough of them for the whole floor. Now that the vanity is installed I can see there needs to be another row of accents. It bothers me a lot, but dear, careful GC is reluctant to pull up tiles for fear of damaging the radiant heat pad. Should I tell him to throw caution to the wind? He is not a tiling pro but he has lots of experience at tiling and has done a great job so far.

This is how my floor looked before the grout was added. We are waiting for more accents to arrive but I want to add another row to the left of the open spots. Since there is a radiant heat mat underneath is it too risky? (btw The threshold pieces are not remaining).

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1394826}}

The crown transition can be easily handled by padding out the wall with a filler strip of wood behind the crown. I'd keep the bottom of the filler strip even with the bottom edge of the crown. It'll simply look like the crown is "thicker" where it's padded out.

If you need a drawing for clarity let me know.

Cutting into tile over a radiant pad can be tricky. The choice will be would you rather have the extra dots or would you rather have the radiant heat under the tiles? The work can be done, but it's tedious, and you'd have to absolve your GC of fault should he damage the wiring.

What I'd do is I'd use my angle grinder to grind away the surface of the tile to a certain depth, then I'd slice the dots, taking some material off the back so they are not as thick. Set the slightly thinner dots in the floor and all should be well. Tedious work though.

Thanks, Mongo. I tried suggesting your approach to GC this am. Maybe I didn't describe it right but he didn't think it would match the rest of the crown and didn't want to do anything that "didn't look professional." So I didn't get my way and the crown butts up to the tile, which doesn't look professional. Oh well, I can live with it for a while and maybe some day I'll correct it, but not now. I think the good GC underestimated how involved my bathroom would be so I didn't think it worth belaboring the point.

If you have a drawing of this overlap technique I'd appreciate having it for future reference though, at your liesure. No rush.

Thanks again and don't call me Shirley! ;-)