Tutorial: Putting a Cap on a Half Wall

It was in April of 2007 that we decided to build a home.  We didn't spend much time looking at floor plans because we fell in love instantly with the floor plan we chose.  One of our favorite features was the great room that opens up to the kitchen.  The stairway to the basement is also in the great room and it serves as a sort of divider for the entry way and great room.

When we went through and picked the finishes for our house, we decided to do a half wall instead of railing. There were two reasons for this:  One, the banister we wanted was so expensive!  I could think of a million places I'd rather spend almost $5,000.  Two, I knew I wanted our computer and computer desk in the great room.  By having the solid half wall, it would hide all the wires and also provide a place to put plugs.  I'm so glad we ended up going with the half wall instead of the banister.

Unfortunately, when we moved in the half wall did not look like the picture above.  It looked like this picture below instead.

It looked completely unfinished and I hated it from the minute we moved it.  Finally, after we had been in our house almost three years, I convinced TJ to tackle the project for me.  It ended up being a little more time consuming than I imagined (even though, overall, it probably took 3-4 hours), but it was worth every second of it!

Estimated Project Cost: $80.00 (This cost will depend completely on the amount you are covering.  Our half wall is fairly large, so the cost was a little higher.)

Difficulty: Easy

FYI: This is not a project that can be done very easily with just one person.

First, we measured the length we would need for the top piece of the cap.

TJ then cut it.  On the long outside wall that is L shaped, he used a mitered edge to make the to pieces of the L come together beautifully.  We also bought our material from Stock Building Supply so that we could get a piece long enough so that we wouldn't have any other seams.

After he had the pieces cut out, he routered the edges to give them a nice finished look.

In the picture above, you can see how one corner of the top piece pokes out a little further.

We did that so that it would wrap nicely around the wall.  Then, we attached the top cap piece using some caulk and a few finish nails.

Next, we started assembling the crown molding to go below the cap.  Since our house has bullnose (rounded) corners, we had to learn how to correctly cut the crown molding to go around the corners.  We learned how set our miter saw at 22.5 degrees and do all four cuts.  We should have a video tutorial on how to do this soon!  One woodworking tip we did learn through this project was that it's much easier to install the crown if you glue the cuts together first.

We attached all the crown using our finish nail gun.

The most time consuming part was filling all the nail holes and caulking the seams.

Pardon the terrible quality cell phone pictures, but these show a nice before-paint and after-paint shot.  The picture above also shows the mitered edge for the L shaped piece.

Once we finished the project, I couldn't believe how much it added.  It looked even better in person than it did in my head!  It gave it a great classy, finished look.

Ignore the baby gate.  Maybe we'll be free of this gate in two or three years!

Isn't it beautiful?

Such a drastic change!