The Ancient Basement–Massive Beams

If you’ve been following along, you know that we are going for and 1930’s English pub kind of vibe in the basement because of the space that we’re working with. One of the things that we decided to do was to add oak beams to the ceiling to add a nod to that look.

Earlier this summer, my husband worked with a friend who has a portable band saw mill to cut oak beams (they weren’t lumber grade) into roughly 4″ x 6″ beams–some needed to be about 13′ long and we had a couple that only needed to be 9′ long. However, a 4″ x 6″ x 13′ long, or even 9′ long, is really damn heavy. The logs had been laying in his barn for a little while, but they were still pretty green, so my husband carefully stacked and stickered (putting 1″ x 1″ boards (stickers) between the layers of beams) in the upstairs garage.

Well, that is the side of the garage that the jet skis are stored in over the off season and as we approached the end of the river season, Mike started working on the beams. First, he had to get the face that would be mounted to the joist flat so that it would mate up properly. He did the first couple with a long hand plane–and with oak that has a lot of knots and imperfections, that was SLOW going. He upgraded to a Bosch hand held planer and that sped things up by like 10 times. He did the planing, and I did some of the sanding, and over the course of a few weekends, we (he) got them all done. (But we did end up having the jet skis where I normally park for a while.)

He put several coats of Tung Oil finish on them and then hoisted them into place. This was a tricky operation because they were so hard to handle and so heavy (safety was a big concern).

He had to cut the dry wall where it exists to fit the ends of the beams in.

Now they are all in place and they look SO much better than I ever dreamed they would and it has helped us see what the finished basement will look and feel like. We couldn’t be happier with how they turned out–even with ALL the work.

I’m really proud of him. This was a HUGE job and he did some really beautiful work.