I needed to install a prefinished glue-in-place crown molding as a last-minute addition to the guest rooms for my wife’s bed-and-breakfast business. Putting up 12-ft. lengths of flexible wood strips without smearing adhesive on the walls or ceiling was well-nigh impossible without another set of hands, or a set of supports to hold the pieces near their final position. Ideally, they should be something that I could maneuver quickly and accurately, with one hand.

The caulking gun that I would use to apply the adhesive turned out to be the inspiration for this solution. As shown in the drawing, I bought a couple of caulking guns, removed the cartridge cages and drilled three holes for screws in the frames. I then cut 2×3 uprights to about 4 in. less than the floor-to-ceiling height. Next, I screwed a stripped-down caulking gun to one end of each upright. The most difficult part was chiseling away a bit of the uprights to clear the guns’ moving parts, which took maybe five minutes. I stuck a bit of carpet scrap to the pistons to prevent marring the ceiling.

I made two uprights, and for my purposes, a cup hook screwed into the side of each 2×3 was all I needed to support the trim pieces near the ceiling while I applied adhesive to their backsides. The gun mechanism also allowed me to reposition the upright quickly once the trim was glued to the ceiling so that I could make small adjustments to the position of the trim and press it into place.

The uprights could be used almost anywhere you need to apply light outward pressure, including constructing a dust screen with plastic or fabric sheeting stapled to the timbers.

Mark Miller, South Lopham, None