beam treatment

[JoceAndChris]

Lou, having seen a few pics of your fascinatingly wonderful but rather challenging new home, I think you should live with the beams as they are for a few years, and maybe tackle some other stuff?

It's funny how your feelings chop and change on this one; you might decide you want them all cream in a couple of years.

And yes, yes, yes, no sandblasting - they might not survive it!

 

[Cloudscape]

return them to their natural state

My totally ignorable opinion... maybe the beams are currently in their natural state. :wink: I'm not sure we have a right to expose constructional materials, just because we can. I suppose we all have a different opinions (especially regarding aesthetics), but I feel that current fashion might influence people's 'restoration' decisions. Did I say that out loud? :shock:

 

[JoceAndChris]

:lol:

Will somebody please tell me once and for all how beams in cottages would have looked in 1800?

 

[lou]

OK - I PROMISE I will NOT sandblast the beams that are painted. I may, however, remove the paint. I have seen such lovely wooden beams in various old properties and, as I said before, I love looking at good wood. Some of the beams we have unfettered from their boxed-in carcasses are in their natural state so what would be a good finish for them? Some of them look as though they have been slightly limewashed. And we also have a plank and post (muntin board?) screen which is limewashed on one side and in it's original, beautiful state on the other, except for the bottom which has seriously deteriorated. Any suggestions for good finishes for this?View attachment 2

 

[Flyfisher]

I feel that current fashion might influence people's 'restoration' decisions.

I'm sure it does. And I'm equally sure that fashion in times gone by would have influenced building/decorating decisions as well.

My understanding is that stripped pine is a completely modern fashion whereas historically pine was regarded as a cheap wood and therefore disguised by painting. I've also read that rendering was a sign of affluence and that sometimes only the front of houses were rendered. Our house is fully rendered at the front but the timbers are still showing at the rear. Make of that what you will. Also, our 'Georgian makeover' didn't extend to the rear of the house, probably - I guess - for much the same reason.

We have a mixture of bare and painted beams and thats the way they are staying.*


*I must confess that the effort required to strip the paint probably outweighs our thoughts of authenticity.

 

[lou]

Flyfisher - got any pics of your beams, painted and not?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

OK - I PROMISE I will NOT sandblast the beams that are painted. I may, however, remove the paint. I have seen such lovely wooden beams in various old properties and, as I said before, I love looking at good wood. Some of the beams we have unfettered from their boxed-in carcasses are in their natural state so what would be a good finish for them? Some of them look as though they have been slightly limewashed. And we also have a plank and post (muntin board?) screen which is limewashed on one side and in it's original, beautiful state on the other, except for the bottom which has seriously deteriorated. Any suggestions for good finishes for this?View attachment 2

If I've understood your posts correctly, this is a listed building. Can I just check first of all that you've not got to this point without listed building consent, or at least some input from your conservation officer?

Having asked that, quite obviously you have one of those "dilemma houses", where you keep finding interesting stuff that previous generations have covered up in order to keep in with the latest fashion, which is often attractive and interesting in its own right, so the question is, are you going back to the original, are you conserving what you found when you walked in the first day you owned it (apparently not), or are you doing something else?

I'd suggest that in each room you need to think carefully about what treatment best suits the character of that room as it now is. The screen looks like a real problem. Clearly the "flush" side has been painted and if it suits the rest of that room I'd suggest you either leave it in its present distressed state or paint it again. The other side was clearly originally exposed (hence the decorative chamfer stops at the foot of each post), but has equally clearly been plastered over (the marks of the laths are visible). The last of your photos shows the fireplace gone from the room it faces. In this particular case I think you'd be as well to clean up that face of the screen as gently as possible, and leave it on display as an archaeological "relic".

 

[Jill]

Will somebody please tell me once and for all how beams in cottages would have looked in 1800?

In our case rather short and wonky

 

[Jon Maine]

Will somebody please tell me once and for all how beams in cottages would have looked in 1800?

In our case rather short and wonky

Oh Jill, i love your wonkiness..... :?

 

[Flyfisher]

Flyfisher - got any pics of your beams, painted and not?

Here are a couple of photos. The painted beams are basic and functional whereas the bare ones are clearly rather more decorative.

 

[robgil]

yup , we got wonky beams.
our beams are not this colour. on some of these beams there is brown paint with older white paint underneath , blue underneath that then green underneath that.

i would never sand blast beams , always choose the most none damaging form of repair work first and if you cannot repair it without damaging it then you have to ask your self is it entirely necessary to do the repair work.

 

[Jon Maine]

yup , we got wonky beams.
our beams are not this colour. on some of these beams there is brown paint with older white paint underneath , blue underneath that then green underneath that.

i would never sand blast beams , always choose the most none damaging form of repair work first and if you cannot repair it without damaging it then you have to ask your self is it entirely necessary to do the repair work.

nice pictures

 

[robgil]

thank you. the ground floor looks like a building site but our first floor is still quite a nice place so it is able to give me a much needed place to escape to at the end of the day.

 

[Jon Maine]

Watch out for the blue and green paints for arsenic etc...

 

[FamilyWiggs]

i would never sand blast beams , always choose the most none damaging form of repair work first and if you cannot repair it without damaging it then you have to ask your self is it entirely necessary to do the repair work.

Very good summation rogbil - the PPUK Hippocratic Oath*; "First do no harm"

NB This is very different to the PPUK hyper-critic oaf !! 8)

 

[JoceAndChris]

:lol:

House looks amazing robgil! Wonderful beams!

 

[Penners]

Will somebody please tell me once and for all how beams in cottages would have looked in 1800?

Well, that question seems to have been sidestepped above.

My (amateur and very non-expert) thoughts are that, in all but the richest and the poorest households, they probably wouldn't have "looked" at all. Wealthy households, with beautifully moulded beams, would probably have had them on display (see Flyfisher's enviable ceiling on the previous page). The poor wouldn't have been able to do much to cover up theirs.

But in the majority of artisan or middle-class homes, the beams would have been concealed behind plastered walls, for fear of being regarded as infra-dig.

That's the way I've always understood it, anyway. I wonder whether other, more knowledgeable folk have other views.

 

[Moo]

In really unimportant places (like the attics in our house, where the servants used to sleep) they seem to have had sacking stretched across them, held in place with tacks. I remember seeing a similar ceiling, still more or less intact, where the remnants of very simply decorated sprigged wallpaper that had been glued to the sagging hessian were still visible. This was in a very humble cottage that used, I was told, to house a harness-maker

 

[JoceAndChris]

How fascinating, thank you very much for that Moo and Penners!

The poor wouldn't have been able to do much to cover up theirs.

Mmm, I don't think the beams in my attic bedroom (gamekeeper's maid's room?) had any kind of finish on them, and I don't think they were covered up either. The wooden staircase also looks like it's never had anything applied to it.

There may have been sacking stretched across, but there's no evidence of that really. All very interesting.

 

[DaveBrigg]

Some of the beams we have unfettered from their boxed-in carcasses are in their natural state... Some of them look as though they have been slightly limewashed.

I think this answers the question. In the 1800's the beams would have been boxed in. Older beams were limewashed. This helped protect against woodworm, and made the room lighter. Later, many people did not want to live in such rustic conditions, and if they could afford it added a lath and plaster ceiling and boxed in the main beam.

If the beams are bare wood, you have possibly removed the original box around the beams which would have been there when they were fitted. The beams that have limewash on them were probably exposed for a while before being 'politened'.
If you have kept the carcasses which boxed in the beams, you might want to consider putting them back, or at least keeping them safe as part of the original fabric of your house. If not, limewash is a lovely material to work with. You can make your own very cheaply (search the forum) and if you then don't like it, it washes off with water.