Covering Fur Down/Soffit in the Kitchen

Brian & Kaylor
by Brian & Kaylor
18 Materials
$250
2 Days
Medium

Fur down is the wall over your cabinets. Many people call it soffit but I was corrected when using that term and was told the construction term is fur down. You learn something new everyday. Some of you might have an empty space between the cabinets and ceiling. We had that before and I decorated it with cute little items that collected dust and got kind of greasy and gross after being there a while. If we had purchased new cabinets, I would have removed the fur down and had our cabinets built to the ceiling. We used our current cabinets so I had to figure out a way to hide the fur down. Your home might have AC and/or other wires and pipes going through the fur down so you can't remove yours without the huge cost to run all those wires and pipes somewhere else. Hiding it might be a better and cheaper option for you, too. I decided that making it look like the fur down was part of the cabinets instead of looking like textured wall was a great way to hide it. The idea was to give the illusion that the cabinets go to the ceiling.

If you have read my other posts, you know that our goal was to make our 1980's kitchen look custom and high end without the custom, high end budget. Moldings are a great way to add the custom look for a small cost. I decided to use moldings to hide and cover the fur down. Here is the fur down before. It went all the way around the kitchen except for where the pantry is. And like most fur downs, it was textured and painted the same as the walls. To cover the fur down, I used drywall compound to fill in the texture. It took several rounds of filling and sanding. Once the texture was completely covered and everything was smooth, the moldings were added.

We built a refrigerator enclosure for our new counter depth fridge. The moldings were wrapped around it and the crown molding was continued into the dining room to create a seamless look. I went with two different moldings. There is an average sized crown molding along the ceiling and a small chair rail molding in the center.

The chair rail molding is only in the kitchen area. It starts with the fridge enclosure on the left of the kitchen and stops with the pantry on the right side.


Side by side before and after.

I love the final result. My husband and I had never done crown molding and were a little intimidated but I am so glad we did this. It wasn't as hard as we thought it would be and the final result is amazing. See all the kitchen before and after pictures along with product details here--> http://www.brianandkaylor.com/kitchen/

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  • Scarlett Carver Scarlett Carver on Feb 24, 2023

    Beautiful! It’s like a whole new kitchen! Great job!

  • Stacey Potts Stacey Potts on Feb 21, 2024

    It looks amazing but I have to ask, where did all that extra counterspace come from? It's not there in the before pics, but there is a tons of counterspace in the after pics...hmmm. For onw, it looks like you moved the fridge and closed off a doorway? Please explain.

  • Jodie Jodie on Feb 22, 2024

    Great job! It looks so open and much bigger! A lot more inviting.

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  • MB MB on Feb 24, 2023

    As much as I would hate to cover up my soffit it instead of finding some usable space behind it, if lucky. :-) Y'all did a great job. It looks fantastic and bright. We have the soffit but when we got the house they added a shelf to hold things so that helps but it is not the same thing. I am sure there is stuff behind it so we never bothered making holes. I wish we had more room with additional shelves, but really it would be to hide things. We don't have display things...lol only junk in all horizontal spaces

  • Ela. Mari Ela. Mari on Feb 24, 2023

    Beautiful @

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