Our situation is a little different. We are installing new cherry (light/medium stain) cabinets ceiling height with 5" crown with same finish. We intend to put 5" crown in dining area of room (kitchen/dining area is 20x12 and each are is approx. 10x12). We plan to paint dining area crown white.

Both the custom cabinet rep and my son, who has many years of remodeling experience, claim this is commonly done. In fact, I have a 4' break in kitchen crown over a door that will also have the white painted crown. That seemed odd to me but both assured me this is common.

I purchased raw crown from cabinet company for dining area to assure that the profile matches which is important.
My son and cabinet rep had different opinions about joining the painted and stained crown. The cabinet will install the cabinets and stained crown and my son the rest of the crown. The cabinet rep suggested mitering the corners but my son said he was old school and would use coping saw to join the crown.

I hope this is helpful. Best wishes

janralix, we just ran into this with the base of a cabinet we had built in our livingroom, so I realize it is a little different sort of situation. But I loved the little corner blocks (this was the first I had heard of them) with the finial. We painted them the same color as the cabinet/cabinet base (black) with the remaining base being stained wood. Love the look personally, but I realize that others might feel differently especially if they are in the trades.

jerryp: Unfortunately, my cabinet company wanted $2K+ to mill crown molding to match their proprietary cabinetry crown molding profile...Yikes! Does your son "have coping saw and will travel"?

claybabe: We kind of agree with you. Using the blocks was new to us as well, but given our options, and the fact that we kind of like the look of the decorative blocks, that is probably the route we'll take.

Like many posters say: Do what works for you!

Thanks!

Well, you asked for opinions and hopefully you wanted honest ones... I think the blocks look cheap and amateur-ish. It is either the lazy way or the inexperienced way to do crown molding.

That being said though, it might be your best option. Do you have any photos of the space or at least the layout? Sometimes there are places you could dead end the crown where it works really well without looking odd or like it is missing. (I think of Breezy's kitchen where she stopped the cabinet crown at the back wall b/c there were windows and the hood to contend with.)

Could you just use a 3'' crown with a similar profile for the rest of the room or are you set on the 5'' crown? I know the cabinet company wants bukoo bucks for matching crown but is there something that is pretty-darn close? Up close to the ceiling no one is going to notice a slight difference. What does your carpenter/GC suggest?

Are there pics of the solution? We are currently facing the same scenario