Thursday 2 September 2010

Continuing in the Attic

We have now finished insulating and closing the walls of the attic, which means it is time to start insulating and closing the ceiling. Before we can do that it is important that we clean the wooden beams, because there will be a lot less space to work in once the ceiling is up.
Before
During
After
Most of what we removed was dust, but it looks like the beams had been lime-washed (but only once) a long time ago. We have removed almost no wood, so the adze cuts and chapentiers marks are still clearly visible. Today we will be giving the wood a coat of xylophene, an anti-insect, anti-fungus treatment, then once the walls and ceilings are totally finished, a final coat of wax (maybe).

What we do find interesting is that we have three different kinds of wood up there. Of course, there is a lot of oak (mainly the St Andrew's crosses), but there is also chestnut (the long beam of slightly yellow wood) and poplar (coming later in another photo).

Simon

6 comments:

Ken Broadhurst said...

How do you clean the beams?

WV is "gentle" so I assume that will part of your answer.

Simon said...

Ken. We have used no product, but rather a fibre wheel attachement on a drill. It takes off loose paint and dust, but very little else. The dust was a couple of millimetres thick and compacted, so just sewwping didn't do the trick.

It has the bonus of polishing the wood as well.

Amanda said...

It looks really good. (I hope you wear a mask when it gets dusty).

Simon said...

I is a good typer, I is....

sewwping = sweeping.

Nadege. I can't do dust masks - my glasses fog up - and fog AMD a thick coat of dust would make using a powertool even more dangerous!

Seine Judeet (Judith) said...

Oh, gee, Simon, I thought that this was some clever way of spelling soaping :))

The beams are very, very cool. :))

Judy

Ken Broadhurst said...

Thanks, Simon. We'll look into that but with 45-year-old beams we probably won't need to do the same kind of cleaning.

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