Originally when all houses were built on our block in 1872 they had these wonderful plaster ceiling moldings. Unfortunately like many of the houses, our house lost them at some point in its history. But fortunately they do remain in some of our neighbors’ homes which we were able to measure.

So our plan is to recreate them in place in plaster, at least that is what we are going to attempt.

To do a mock up, I cut the above test profile on our office laser cutter and attached it to a wood guide.

Then you slowly build up the profile… Apply plaster, run the profile knife across it, apply plaster, run the profile knife across it, apply plaster, run the profile knife across it, repeat 5 more times!

My test was successful enough that we are going for it in the dining room. The test needs a few more passes to get it smooth but we got the idea.

So here is the original profile and the couple of tweaks we made. The biggest change was adding a recess at the wall to make that intersection more forgiving.

So here we go cutting out the final knife.

Now I just need to attach them to the guide and we will be good to go.

In the mean time, we got 3 coats of spackle on everything so the room is in good shape.

Next up, running the plaster moldings in place on the ceiling… This is going to be fun.