Faux Beam for Cathedral Ceiling

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Cameron Fields

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Thanks for taking the time to help, this is my dilemma.
I have Florida room with an 11 ft. Cathedral Ceiling and what I believe to be an aluminum beam that has a fan attached. I have repainted the room in green. To me it looks a bit ugly. I was thinking about attaching a Faux wood beam. Does anyone know if that would work? How can I test the strength of the existing beam? And I would like some options on colors would the wood beam be best? Natural dark brown or a light green? The room is spring green and a picture is attached. Basically what are my options I believe the beam is the main support I don't want it falling down.
 

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Dana

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Why faux wood rather then the real thing? Wrapping it in clear 1 x douglas fir screwed to the beam at regular intervals would give it substantially more strength, and will look pretty good with just an linseed oil/polyurethane conversion varnish. Doug fir darkens over time to a deep reddish brown.

I did exactly this to cover up a pair of butt-ugly pine 2 x 12s that were part of a structurally necessary roof support in an addition at my house. Had I been there ahead of time I would have just specified clear doug-fir and finished them. The wrapped beam looks (and is) substantially bigger and more structural than the engineer-specifed truss element. Had to wrap the 2 x 8 king-pin too, but it looks great now.

Clear quarter-sawed clear yellow pine or spruce would look pretty good too. It would add less strength than doug-fir and might need a different finish though if you were looking for a darker color than a natural medium brown (aged pine) or lighter brown (spruce).

A different architectural style, but this is what aged doug fir looks like against avocado green:

trim.jpg
 

Cameron Fields

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Why faux wood rather then the real thing? Wrapping it in clear 1 x douglas fir screwed to the beam at regular intervals would give it substantially more strength, and will look pretty good with just an linseed oil/polyurethane conversion varnish. Doug fir darkens over time to a deep reddish brown.

I did exactly this to cover up a pair of butt-ugly pine 2 x 12s that were part of a structurally necessary roof support in an addition at my house. Had I been there ahead of time I would have just specified clear doug-fir and finished them. The wrapped beam looks (and is) substantially bigger and more structural than the engineer-specifed truss element. Had to wrap the 2 x 8 king-pin too, but it looks great now.

Clear quarter-sawed clear yellow pine or spruce would look pretty good too. It would add less strength than doug-fir and might need a different finish though if you were looking for a darker color than a natural medium brown (aged pine) or lighter brown (spruce).

A different architectural style, but this is what aged doug fir looks like against avocado green:

trim.jpg
Thank you, I might give that a go, I was saying strength because this room is also an addition and I don't want the beam to fall down.
 

MikeKenmore

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dana: that's some fine work you did there!

for the OP: faux wood beams are horrible looking. we looked into getting one and had a $25 (ripoff) sample sent to us. horrible horrible horrible.

i'm going to be doing what dana did with doug fir and wrap the old beam. i don't need strength --- just doing it for the architectural upgrade.

dana: do you know of a good way to make a 16ft long miter joint that'll have tight edges? our current beam is made up of two vertical boards that sandwich a horizontal board, creating a butt joint with a bit of a lip. not the look i like. i see in your pic, you dressed up the edge with some moulding. did you make that, or buy it, or...?
 

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Dana

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Those pics are not from my house, they're random shots from the web I chose to show the color that doug-fir ages into, and it's aesthetic compatibility with pale green paint schemes.

The doug-fir wraps for my ugly beams were fabbed up at a fine-furniture factory using fairly precision equipment and adjusted for fit on site. I'm not sure how easy it would be to do as tight a job with the tooling a finish carpenter might bring to a job site, but there's a lot of real talent out ther.
 
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