Faux Wood Workshop

Let’s start with a definition, for those who may be new to home remodeling and architecture lingo.

Corbel: \ˈkȯr-bəl\ A bracket of stone, wood, brick, or other building material, projecting from the face of a wall and generally used to support a cornice or arch.

These right-angled supports, most often seen along roof lines, have been used since the late centuries BCE, when China first introduced the great granddaddy of today’s corbels (called a dougong) to hold extra weight and maintain buildings’ structural integrity. And, since way back in the day, corbels have added a little extra pizzazz to said buildings’ exterior.  In Classical architecture this meant ornate marble molding, and during the French Gothic period gargoyles became all the rage.

Today, however, with feats of modern technology and engineering — basically improved man made building materials and tools—the necessity of corbels has fallen by the wayside. The extra exterior supports just aren’t needed to hold your roof up anymore.

But (lucky for us at FauxWoodBeams.com) that doesn’t mean you can’t take a cue from the days of old and use corbels to add some personality to your home.

Here are some ideas to use corbels in your redecorating:

Exterior Design

As mentioned before, the most common way to make the most out of your corbels is to use them to support (or at least pretend to support) your roof’s ledge. Choose the design and style that goes best with your home’s vibe—whether this means rough sawn wood to enhance a rustic look, or carved Cyprus for a more Victorian touch—and go to town.

You can also place your corbels below windowsills, around your garage, or fit them into other unique architectural nooks your home may have. Check out these photos for more ideas.

Interior Details

Continue your corbel design inside. One way to do this is to use the corbels to enhance your ceiling beams, be they faux or real. Simply attach the corbels to the wall at the vertex of wall and ceiling. This way your ceiling beams don’t end abruptly, but rather come to a smooth and seamless finish. Here is an example of corbels used in this way.

Maybe you don’t have visible ceiling beams. Instead, corbels can be added around a mantle or the interior of a window. Use them to hold up shelves, window curtain rods, or cabinets. Basically, scour your home for nooks and crannies that look like they need a little extra support, or just some spicing up.

Of course, we have a zillion—okay, that’s an exaggeration, we have seven—styles of corbels to choose from. Make sure you click through to check them all out, and then write back with your thoughts.

Here’s the now much anticipated (I’m sure) link to our corbels.

Custom Woodland Cedar Beams

Custom Woodland Cedar Fireplace Mantel

Check out the color called Cedar!

We are excited to offer this new color to our Woodland Beams, Corbels and Mantels . For years, we have been providing unfinished beams so you can stain then yourselves, as well as offering our beams finely finished in color "Walnut"

We have heard your requests for another option. The most common request was for a color that resembled Cedar beams.

The new color “Cedar” has been added to the Custom Woodland Beams, Custom Woodland Mantels, and Mojave Mantels.

Woodland accessories such as kneebraces and corbels, now also have the option of cedar color.

Also available in cedar is Mojave mantles and corbels.

Getting a Knotty Pine look on Faux Wood Beams

Thinking about getting the knots on your new Faux Wood Beams to stand out like real knotty pine wood? Follow these few easy steps to get your beams looking great! First you must pick the stain for your beam, in this example we used American Walnut by Minwax. You will need to apply the stain to the knot area of the beam using a small paint brush. When you have finished, you will need to remove any extra stain. you can blot it off using a rag. After the stain has fully dried, you will need to coat the beam with an overall stain.We used English Oak by Minwax. You can use a larger brush to stain the whole beam. Remember to remove any extra stain. Let the beam dry and your all set! Here are some beams that a customer had this process done to. Click to enlarge

When you butt one beam into the side of another one, you want the joint to be so tight that it’s invisible.

With smooth beams, you can just cut the butting beam square, and it should fit against the main beam without a problem. It’s a different story with rough, distressed beams.

Sure, you can cut the beam square, butt it to the main beam, and fill the gap with caulk. But you’re likely to have a lot of gap to fill, and the result can look messy and unprofessional.

To do it right, you should scribe the end of the butting beam to match the contours of the main beam. All you need is a simple circle-drawing compass and a jigsaw or coping saw.

1. Lay the beams together as shown in the photo, at the exact position where they’ll meet.

2. Spread the compass an inch or so. Hold it flat and slide it up along the beams as shown, so the point follows the surface of the main beam while the pencil draws a line on the butting beam. Do this all the way around the top and the other side.

3. Tilt the jigsaw shoe to an angle of 10-15 degrees, so that you’ll cut away more material toward the center of the beam and make a sharper outer edge. Carefully cut along the scribed line on all three sides of the beam. You can also use a coping saw.

4. Test fit the beam, and remove any high spots with a coarse file until you have a perfect fit.

5. Stain the cut end of the beam to prevent any possibility of raw polyurethane showing through a crack in the joint.

Now you’re ready to install the beams and have the satisfaction of seeing a perfectly invisible joint.

Corbels are beautiful architectural features that add class, flair and realism to your project. A corbel visually anchors the end of a beam so it looks solid and well supported.

But how do you know what size corbel to use? The answer depends on the kind of beam you’re using.

Suppose your beams have well-defined edges that are square and straight or just slightly rounded. These include our Raised Grain, Woodland and Sandblasted beams. In this case, choose corbels that are the same width as the beams or just slightly narrower.

The first photo shows a corbel slightly narrower than the beam it supports. An equal-width corbel would also look great with this beam.

On the other hand, suppose your beams have irregular edges that are distressed and significantly rounded. Our Timber beams are like this. In this case, choose corbels that are at least a couple of inches narrower than the beams. This lets the corbel rest against the flat part of the beam and avoid overlapping the rounded edges.

The second photo shows corbels narrow enough to rest against only the flat part of a heavily distresssed and rounded beam.

 

To wrap up our series of tips on coffered ceilings (see part 1  and part 2), let’s consider the elegant look of smooth-surface beams such as the ones in our Regal  and Regal 2 lines. When you use these pre-primed beams for a coffered ceiling, you’re looking for flawless joints that don’t show under the final coat of paint.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Follow the steps in part 1  for installing the beams using double-mitered joints. As you do — no matter how careful you are — you’ll find that not all your joints are perfect. Some joints will have small cracks. Some will be uneven, with one beam a little lower or higher than the others. These imperfections don’t show with rough, distressed beams, but they do with smooth beams.

2. Fill those inevitable cracks and irregularities with auto body filler. Apply it with a flexible putty knife, making each joint as smooth as you can. Then carefully sand the filler so each joint is silky smooth. Be careful not to sand down the surfaces of the beams themselves.

3. Prime the filled areas with the primer recommended by the manufacturer of your finish paint.

4. Apply the finish paint to all the beams.

5. Admire.

6. (Optional) Show off.

Last week’s tip was about coffered ceilings with four-way mitered joints. But mitering isn’t the only approach, and sometimes it won’t work. You just can’t form a nice, neat mitered joint between beams that are irregular, rounded and heavily distressed.

 

To make a coffered ceiling with irregular beams such as our Timber or Rustic styles, use the butt-joint method shown in the photos.

1. Choose the beam style you like, and order it in two different sizes. Order the larger beams to run along the entire length of the room, and the smaller beams to bridge the short spaces between the larger beams.

2. Install the large, long beams in the usual way, following the standard installation instructions . Be sure to use adhesive along the top edges.

3. Let the adhesive set for a day, so the large beams are fully stable before you start squeezing the smaller beam pieces between them.

4. Cut pieces of the smaller beams slightly oversize, to fit snugly between the larger beams, and install them following these tips:

• Usually you can install a single support block at the midpoint of each piece. Use more supports if the piece is longer than 5 feet or the ceiling isn’t quite flat.

• Do use adhesive along the top edges of each beam piece.

• Don’t apply adhesive to the ends of the small beam piece, because it will smear all over the large beam when you squeeze the small piece into place. The snug fit will keep the joint tight.

5. If needed, fill any gaps with matching caulk or filler.

Next week we’ll have one more look at coffered ceilings, with tips for using smooth, elegant, painted beams.

No one can claim that making a coffered ceiling is quick and easy. Faux beams make the job a lot easier, but there’s an art to making each joint look good and stay tight. Here’s the best way to create perfect four-way mitered joints.

1. Carefully plan, measure and lay out the grid pattern of the coffers. Snap a chalk line on the ceiling along the center line of each beam to make a checkerboard with perfect right angles.

 

 

2. For each intersection on the checkerboard, make a crossed mounting block from two pieces of 2-by lumber. Rip each piece to the exact width of the inside of the beam, and make its length about three times its width. Screw and glue the two pieces together at right angles. Then anchor each crossed block to the ceiling aligned with the chalk marks.

 

3. Take time and care cutting and dry-fitting each beam. At each four-way intersection, miter each beam in a V using a precision miter saw.

4. Stain the mitered edges to match the finished beam. This helps hide any imperfections in the joinery.

5. Mount the beams to the blocks. To lock everything together as a single unit, use adhesive on every mating surface: the mitered edges, the inside of the beam where it slips over the mounting block, and the edges of the beam that touch the ceiling. Apply a light bead, slightly back from exposed edges to avoid squeeze-out. Screw through the sides of each beam into the mounting blocks as usual.

 

6. Carefully wipe away any excess adhesive that squeezes out.

 

7. Step back and admire the perfect joints that will stay that way for a long, long time.

It goes without saying that faux beams add a warm woody glow to your room. But they can also help add the glow of real light.

The hollow part of the beam is a great place to hide electric wires and route them to light fixtures mounted inside or on top. The three photos show three different ways of lighting up your beams.

Hiding uplights inside the hollow of the beam

The first photo shows suspended beams (attached only at their ends) with lights inside the hollow part, casting indirect light up at the ceiling. These could be fluorescent strips, rope lights, track lights — whatever gives the effect you want.

These beams are short and hefty, so they’re able to bear the weight of the light fixtures without additional support.

Mounting tracklights along the beam top

The second photo shows exposed tracklights along the top of a suspended beam. This is a much longer suspended beam than in the first photo, and it’s supported by doubled 2x6s inside the beam. (Our website explains how to install a long suspended beam.)

The tracklights, then, mount to the 2x6s — not to the beam itself. Because of this, you don’t need to worry about the weight or size of the fixtures.

Installing recessed lights in the beam bottom

The third photo shows recessed lights in the bottom of attached beams. You install them just as you would in a plaster or drywall ceiling. Our website gives detailed instructions for installing recessed lights .

Of course, you have to choose fixtures small enough to fit in the hollow part of the beam. And they must be rated “IC” for direct contact with insulation.

In this case the beam itself carries the weight of the fixtures, so it’s important to attach the beam securely to the ceiling. Be sure to use construction adhesive along the top edges — which also prevents stray light from escaping at the beam/ceiling joint.

Question: Can I hang stuff on a faux beam? Like a swag lamp or planter, or even a ceiling fan?

Answer: Only if you attach it to a solid anchor inside the beam.

Polyurethane beams are tough and durable, but they don’t have the holding power and rigidity to carry additional weight on their own.

It’s tempting to think of attaching a ceiling hook to the bottom of the beam with a toggle bolt, just as you would to a drywall ceiling, and hanging a plant or swag fixture on it. Resist the temptation.

The right time to think about hanging things from a beam is when you’re installing the beam. Imagine where you might eventually want to hang that planter or swag, and provide solid backing inside the beam at that location.

First attach a mounting block to the ceiling, screwed into a ceiling joist if possible. Then cut a backer block that just fits inside the beam, and screw that block to the side of the mounting block. Don’t forget to write down its location for later reference (“24.5 inches from the west wall”). Then you’ll be able to screw your ceiling hook through the beam and directly into that solid backer block.

What about permanent light fixtures or ceiling fans? Since they require electrical boxes, you need to plan and install them at the same time you install the beam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll find complete instructions for mounting a chandelier or hanging light fixture on our website. For a ceiling fan, follow the same instructions, but make sure you attach the anchoring blocks directly to a wood joist and not just to the surface of the ceiling.