Today's lesson... you can't save $24,000 without putting in a ton of work.
When my wife uttered the words, "now make it look distressed" I gulped... why did she want it distressed?! I thought the resawn look was good enough! My workload just doubled.
Making wood look old in San Diego is a bit of a pickle. We can't just leave wood out over the winter and come back to a pile of perfectly aged lumber. We have to fake it just like you'd expect in southern California.
Distressed can mean many different things to different people but for beams it seems to be something in the family of reclaimed colors and hand hewn appearance. Since our house has what I'd call some Spanish influences in terms of design, the idea is to pretend that these beams were cut by hand and we're living in an old hacienda... when in reality it's a 1985 tract home.
I don't really have any tools designed specifically to create a hand hewn look, so I improvised. Tried everything I have until my floor scraper got the job done pretty well. I wish I were chopping into 2" material instead of 1" so I could be a little more aggressive and buy some other tools. I'm thinking a hammer with a flat, solid claw on it... that I could sharpen. I think it would be a lot easier than the flooring scraper with razor blade and take bigger chunks out. So, learning curve here for sure.
Today I got the first beam from yesterday chopped up a bit, which took 30 minutes of nonstop chopping. So that means I have 6 hours minimum of making fake hand hewn marks on all the beams... in addition to all the other labor. But that job in particular is exhausting and roughon the hands.
Another task for today was building out more of the box beams so I got 30 more 1x6x10 resawn boards. This time I got KD pine instead of green douglas fir. These were $11.19 per board vs $8.22 but they all look the same from a texture and color standpoint whereas the doug fir has a lot of variation. Oh and the Lowes where I got them is much closer to my house so that's a plus. Time is money right?
The amount of work required just to string together two 10-footers seems like such a waste. If only I could find 20' 1x6s. The lumber yard refuses to cut down the long stuff because none of it is even close to straight so they said nobody wants it anyway.
In the last picture you can see the color difference between the doug fir and pine, as well as some stain samples.
Had to turn in for the day early to watch the baby... plus it's really hot today and my farmers tan is going to be permanent soon, I think.
