Thank you! I twent to look and measure again today and think the problem is that on half the kitchen the starter strip would be 1 to 1.5" but on the other half, there is no need or room for a strip--in otherword the crown moulding would go straight from the top of the cabinet so there would be no space between the cabinet door and the moulding, unlike the other half of the kitchen. I'm wondering if that will look weird--eg, perhaps it would be better for us to get a smaller crown moulding (say under 3") and then all the cabinets would have some sort of starter strip, but it would vary between 1 and 3". Of course, that means the 'finished' kitchen gets pushed off again, but maybe I can find crown moulding locally and paint to match rather than order from the cabinet company. Thoughts?

Our ceilings are also off. Or KD designed a 3-piece crown molding that handles it so well that you can't tell w/o getting on a chair and measuring! The center piece, "stock", is what is used to adjust for ceiling height. The "crown" (top) & "soffit" (bottom) pieces are the same height regardless of the ceiling height. You could also do it w/two pieces if you eliminate the soffit piece and just use the stock & crown. The stock would be attached to the piece of wood Ccoombs1 described and the stock piece would be measured to fit the space...then the top piece is put up. (Think of the stock as "filler"!) HTH!

"Well, it's not really crown, but more like a flat board to fill the gap, and a strip of cove molding along the top to make up for the uneven ceilings." This statement heads me in a different direction. There's a joint between the two cabinets now. If you are basically putting in flat fill pieces (as you would do in a modern kitchen) I would put in two pieces of wood, with the joint lined up with the cabinets, and paint each the color of the cabinet below. Since this is usually done in a modern kitchen that's the example I found and you can see below they extended the color of the cabinet below up to the ceiling. I realize you don't have a modern kitchen -- but you are proposing a modern style fill strip for the gap so here ya go:

ffjunk, of course it's a personal choice, but thought I should add, we have a situation similar to yours, with a pass-through window between painted cabinets, as well as a pocket door between a cabinet and a cabinet pantry. Our cabinet crown molding, and our whole house crown molding are the same heights, but different cuts, so the choice was easier for us - keep the same crown molding throughout the kitchen, though it is open concept. We are using stop blocks at the pocket door crown as the pantry is a stained along with the crown molding above it, and the cabinet adjacent is painted, along with the crown above that. The trim around the door will be painted the same as the cabinet/cabinet crown molding. Our ceilings are 9'. We are also using a stop block where the whole house crown meets the kitchen cabinetry crown - it would be very difficult to both cope and scribe the crowns to match and we prefer the stop blocks. I don't have photos as we are still in the midst of remodeling and our cabinet maker has yet to bring and install the stop blocks.