On Casings and Crowns: The Minutiae of Building a New House

Building a new house has taught me all sorts of esoteric terms. Our online construction schedule tells me we’ve already been through damproofing and we are headed toward prebatt tubs. Those words mean nothing to me, but I don’t think I’m expected to understand them—I don’t have to sign off on anything having to do with damproofing or prebatt tubs.

More salient are the items on the decor sheets, which I must approve before the builder proceeds. So I have had to learn the difference between a casing and a crown. And the various sizes. I thought we had approved everything at our last meeting with the decorator, but then I received Decor Sheet 2 from her.

Window trim to look something like this

When I toured one of our builder’s model homes last summer, the great room windows had a really attractive top—a top which I now know consisted of a casing and a crown. My real estate agent suggested that to dress up some of the other windows, we could match the great room window trim on the dining area and master bedroom windows.

This sounded like a good idea to me, so I asked the builder’s representative to add that into our features list and specifications. He did so, specifying “8-inch casing to match great room w/ crown head” for the dining and bedroom windows. That meant very little to me, so I took him at his word that he had described it accurately. This change meant more money, but not too much. It seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to add some flare (dare I call it pizzazz?) to our house, so we proceeded with the specifications he drafted.

But now we are dealing with Decor Sheet 2. In it, the builder’s decorator described the dining and bedroom windows with 8-inch casings, as per the specifications, but she said the great room windows would only have 3-inch casings with a 5-inch crown head.

“Wait a minute—aren’t these supposed to be the same?” I asked the decorator. “That’s what we were told.”

“Well, the great room crowns are only 5-inch above a 3-inch casing. That’s what you saw in the model home.”

“Then how did we get 8-inch casings specified in our contract?” I asked.

She didn’t know—she hadn’t been involved at that stage.

“Can you change it? I want them to match,” I said.

“Which do you want to change—the great room or the other rooms?”

“Which would look better, and how much would it cost either way?” One would think the decorator could answer these questions. But she was reluctant to give an opinion on the appearance, and she had no authority to tell me the cost.

After some discussion, she stated that 5-inch crowns with 3-inch casings would look fine everywhere. “But you should change the door casings in the master bedroom to 3-inch to match,” she added. “The other rooms are already 3-inch casings, but the master casings are currently only 2-inch.” Of course, she couldn’t tell us the cost for that either.

So now we are back to working with the builder’s head guy—the guy who supervises both the representative we talked to during the contract phase and the decorator. We’re still trying to figure out what to do and what the cost change will be. I think we’ll go with 3-inch casings and 5-inch crowns on all three rooms. If we’re lucky, the cost will be about a wash—the smaller casings above the windows offsetting the larger casings elsewhere in the master bedroom.

Fireplace and bookcases to look something like this

Meanwhile, Decor Sheet 2 also included a line stating “Fireplace per BuilderTrend picture.”

“We talked about the fireplace at our last meeting,” I told her. “I showed you a picture we liked. Which picture on BuilderTrend is it?”

“No, you said you’d pick one.” She hadn’t made a note of our discussion, and neither had I. Admittedly, it was a rushed discussion at the end of the meeting. So we were back to Square One on our fireplace.

I started pouring over pictures of fireplaces on the builder’s website and elsewhere. I talked to my husband, who has very little interest in most of these details. (I’ve kept him totally out of the casing/crown discussion.) He and I agreed on what we want the fireplace to look like—a wood-stained mantel above a painted and tile-framed fireplace, the paint to match the painted bookcases beside the fireplace.

I passed this information back to the decorator. “Can you send me a picture?” she asked.

I sent her five pictures, telling her what we liked in each one. I hope that’s good enough. She seems to think the cabinet guy can make it happen.

I wonder how many more of these pesky issues will arise in the next five months. And how much more new jargon I’ll have to learn.

When have you been forced to deal with a strange lingo?