When renovating cottages or older family houses, architects like to use visible elements of the wooden supporting structures. The wooden beams in such houses remind us that the house has survived and, more importantly, that it will survive a lot. Cracked timber, uneven coloured surfaces, uneven prism shapes, or visible interference from the axe hewing of the log beam. All of these can highlight the age of the property and highlight the quality of the craftsman in your renovation. It is these details that encounter many pitfalls that can spoil the architect’s whole intention.
Original wooden beams in the plasterboard ceiling
The task is obvious, to keep the visible beams in the interior combined with plasterboard in the soffit. There are a few questions that arise in the implementation of such a task, when it is necessary to decide which way to proceed. The easiest and quickest way is to anchor the plasterboard between the joists and seal the resulting joint with acrylic silicone. What seems easiest at first may not be the best, especially in terms of durability and the appearance of unwanted cracks in the future. It is very important to keep as much of the joist visible as possible. When using a CD profile subfloor, you take up to 6 cm off the clear height of the beam. To be able to maintain this clearance, we recommend using a 15 mm HUT profile. This profile is narrower than the CD profile and can help to create the desired effect. For the actual finishing of the plasterboard at the joists, we recommend using a finishing profile with a small shadow joint at least 6 mm wide. In most cases the joists are not ideally straight, but the shadow joint will very effectively hide any unevenness and create a nice line at these joints. When the profile is being trowelled, masking tape is inserted into the joint to prevent the joist from getting dirty during trowelling and subsequent painting.
The visible beams in the interior refer to the age of the property and the now disused skill of hewing beams from logs. Think carefully about every detail and talk to your craftsman about it too. The desired effect is then achieved very easily, for example as in this article.
