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Replacement beams

General description

Two doors along from the house with (among other items that I have made the  coffee table )  there is a thatched house with some new owners. The faux oak beams on the South Eastern gable end had been in position for 80 years and were rotting, especially at the point where they all met.

This is the same house that has an oak porch and oak gates also featured on this web site.

The brief was to remove the old beams, use them as templates and replace with new.

Photo 1 below left: Original beams on the gable end.

Photo 2 below centre: The timbers for the new beams are being shaped. The wood is "beam oak" and is very "green" meaning,  wet and not seasoned much or at all. I am assisted here by a former colleague and very good friend David Curnow.  We are outside my workshop which in a previous life was a milking shed. The old beams serve as a templates.

Photo 3 below right: Our work was synchronised with that of the roof thatchers. So it was that we had scaffolding in place for our work. Getting the biggest of the old beams down, and the replacement beams up required a block and tackle. .

Photo 4 below left: The new beams in place . The plugs were turned up on my lathe and  disguised the beam fixings. They were hammered in,  along with generous helpings of polyurethane glue and left proud.

Photo 5 below right: View from the road with most of the new thatch in place

Photo: 6 below left: Another  view of new beams.

Photo 7 below right: Some four months later, the thatch is beginning to darken and the owner has painted the beams with a protective finish.

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