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I have a house with vaulted ceiling in the kitchen, dining room, living room. There is a wall that separates the kitchen from the living room. It is aprox 12' wall with an open passthrough from room to room where 90% of the wall is about 8' up, leaving about 2' before the ceiling. There is a 2' portion of the wall, the end that the wall goes up to meet the ceiling. It had some really ugly wood trim 1"x2" (nothing special) trim as a crown mold around the connector to the ceiling. The previous owners of the house mounted the trim to the wall, and with the change of temperatures the ceiling shifts up and down, causing a gap. I removed the ugly wood and want to use 'real' crown mold or baseboard trim to mount to the ceiling and act like a sleeve, that slides up and down on the wall, hiding the gap when it appears.
Thoughts?
If need, I would need help on posting a photo of what I am saying if it doesn't makes sense.
Your description makes sense, I can picture what you mean. And I understand what the issue is. I think your solution might work by attaching the crown molding to the ceiling and letting the wall do the "sliding" inside it. However, what may not work is the visual, the "dark line" that would be seen at the bottom of the molding since it would not be made invisible like molding usually is when caulked to hide seams.
In a previous house we had we had a lot of movement seasonally in one non-load-bearing wall, and the wall and ceiling would separate up to a 1/4". I got some 3/4" cording from a fabric store and glued it to the ceiling all the way around the perimeter of the room as a design element - a different kind of "molding". It hid the separation and masked the "dark line" seen when molding isn't caulked to a wall. In another room, simply as a decorative thing to enhance a nautical theme, I glued jute rope all around the ceiling perimeter in the same way.
Maybe instead of wood molding you could use some other nontraditional "molding"?
Well, it's always good practice to nail crown to only one side, whether it be wall or ceiling, just because of the inevitable relative movement. Be advised though that the movement is almost certainly not going to be purely vertical. So if you attach the crown molding to the ceiling, you'll still get a gap at times between it and the vertical wall.
The bigger issue is whether there's anything in the ceiling to attach the molding to. Walls always have a top plate to nail to, but most likely your ceiling only has a joist every 16" and that's pretty far apart to get a crown molding to lie nice and flat. So that's probably what will keep you attaching to the wall.
good points. a.) Ceiling may not move straight vertical b.) there may not be anything good to attach the molding to in the ceiling.
Right now it appears to be a gap over 1/2 an inch. But in the Summer they are at least close to touching. So there is good amount of movement. =\
I guess for attaching it I could use some kind of nail with glue to fasten it to the sheetrock on the ceiling. That'll make for 'fun' if it ever needs to be removed; ripping of the sheetrock paper.
Sigh, I may have to deal with the gap and nail crown molding to the wall and deal with the ceiling gap being exposed.
I would first try to “mechanically” attach the wall section to the ceiling. Assuming conventional framing (see attachment) there should be blocking/bridging between the rafters to attach/anchor the wall. This was most likely just nailed together during the framing (I understand the entire wall isn’t attached; but where it does attach should look something like the diagram).
The movement is the rafters “diaphragming”. They are moving up and down due to temperature fluctuations. Nails are no competition for this amount of strength. However, a structural screw(s) (https://www.fastenersplus.com/produc...r-drive-pkg-50 ) could certainly tie the framing members together and eliminate the movement. This would require a small bit of drywall repair- but, you’ll be doing that any way to repair the corner of the two mating surfaces.
Although trim/crown has been used in such a way to “hide” movement- most notably in truss roof framing- it can certainly be all but completely eliminated with straps, and structural screws.
I've gotten around this in the past by screwing a backer board into the wall/ceiling and then installing the crown onto that. Just make sure that whatever you use for backer is smaller than the crown you are installing so that it does not interfere with the actual crown. Once the backer is in place, just nail the crown right to the backer.
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