Fake Beams - Smarter Every Day 186

Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day! So, if you watch Smarter Every Day for any length of time, you know that it's about whatever I'm thinking about—like in Eclipse, or how brains work, or helicopters, or management, or whatever. You didn't know this about me, but my first internet presence was a website called Destin's World of Woodworking. Not making that up! I sold little wooden pinball machines. It was silly, but I loved it. I loved woodworking.

So my wife and I are remodeling a house, and right now these 150-year-old wooden beams have fascinated me. In this video, we'll show you what it takes to reclaim beams from an old barn and put them in a modern house. Let's get smarter every day!

[Music]

Okay, her story starts in a town I used to live in called Coleman, Alabama. There's a store here called Southern Accents that specializes in what's called architectural antiques. It's the kind of place you can get lost in for hours. In fact, they give you a free Coke when you walk in the door and send you on your way to wander through the warehouses.

When you get back there, you'll find that they keep everything amazing, from old houses that are supposed to be torn down. These guys go into these homes and reclaim all the cool stuff you wouldn't really think about. For example, they have super cool old doorknobs, antique sinks, doors—everything is organized so you can find the exact thing you're looking for. They have a full-blown woodworking shop in case you need to modify something. People come here from all over the world, so whenever my wife and I are in town, we make a point to drop in and check out the new arrivals, because these guys go through stuff all the time.

Colby explains what they do this way: "Old hardware does anything we find that we think is salvageable, whether it's hardware, you've got manuals, light fixtures, old doors—a little bit of everything. What we like to do is bring it in, salad eyes it, strip it, sanded, refinish it, reparent—whatever we can do to get it back to its original former state, that's what we'd like to do."

This is a dangerous store for couples. Before I knew what was happening, my wife was working out a deal with the owner, Garland, to exchange some beams for the footage you're watching right now. Fast forward a few weeks, and she sends me down to their reclaimed structural wood warehouse, which was way more awesome than I expected!

"Dang man, how are you thinking about this? This is ridiculous! It's my first time here! Are you kidding me? I haven't been here—I've never been to this warehouse!"

"Yeah, I took over and sold all the stuff out of it and filled it full of wood."

"That's awesome man! And this is all reclaimed wood from different things?"

"Reclaimed wood! Everything from slabs over there to antique floor. It's a slab—that's a black walnut slab!"

"Holy moly! Where did you get that? Can I talk you out of two beams for the roof for the ceiling?"

"Yeah? Really? Really?"

"Yeah, I didn't know that. Never been here hope is what you want because I got—I’m ready!"

"Yeah, this is gonna be front for scones for an old rustic cabin that we're doing. We'll cut the end straight that's an old sawmill style, right?"

"You see every one of the circular saw works right there? Yeah, there's a tooth of a huge saw blade back in the day—1905, 1910, to 1920—that come around and hit the wood. So every time there was a tooth that hit that wood you would see those circular saw marks. So you usually go by a circular saw marks or by hand. Human beings, when they had a round string that took a big hatchet and then took ax marks, and that's all those chop marks there. And this is called hand-hewn texture. Where the other one is called circular saw so this is a lot older I would think—usually around 1840s to 1880s—where that's around 1880s, usually about 1905—but all the way up until today."

"You said that's the difference in the two?"

"That's the two textures. So you have a hand-hewn so you can see where they chop them with different ax marks."

"That's awesome."

"Round tree square, yep, probably 1850s, 1860s circa."

"And so yes, which is kind of interesting; it was one long 32, 33-foot beam. When we cut it in half, we got 16-footers out."

"Got it. Okay, awesome! Now the difference in some of the hand-hewn beads that you see is a lot of them have mortise holes that are here."

"Uh-huh."

"You hear of mortise and tenon? The mortise is the pocket; the tenon goes straight through and then you peg it through the end of it, right? So these are the mortises where another beam was coming into and intersecting into this right there. The male would come out over they have used in no way this one. So I thought it'd be kind of cool to put it back into some ports. So you'd have to hammer it back in but now it sticks back in there. And so you interlock the beam, but that was your screws and nails back in 1840s and 1850s."

"What I like to do is cut them so you can see it. Then from that, we want to come back in borax this one more time. That helps any insects that are inside this mean that we don't know about—they can lay dormant for fifteen to twenty years. So you always need to treat the beams or put it in the kiln to kill them—to kill them. And so that's what we want to make sure we do after we cut it so that way borax is just a powder. It comes up to the certain insects live inside here, and they come out to the surface to get moisture because they have to have that to live. When they eat that borax that was on the outside of this, which is just a clear substance, and it's harmless to humans—you can buy it at Dollar General, right?"

"Then I go back inside here, but that's like a huge salt tablet—it just draws them out; they can't get back out to get moisture—they're going 'Wow!'"

Builders today go to great lengths to make sure that everything they use in a modern house is square, so that everything fits together. Old beams that are cut by hand are not square, so this is the hardest thing about using old beams in a new house. Garlan has invested in a special type of bandsaw that solves this problem. So after scanning the beams for old hand-cut nails, they'll run them through this saw.

And I must admit part of me hates the idea of cutting something so old, but if you think about it, this is kind of like a rebirth.

"That's wild man, that really is cool! It's like breathing new life into it!"

"What kind of wood is that you think?"

"Believe it or not, I'm making—yeah, I can see it now that you say it. I thought it would be something like this but it's a maple! It's a real nice color, light green, real tight grain to heighten partner, so they make bowling and jello."

At this point, you can choose to use this distressed wood, or you can treat it and make it darker—not with a stain, but with a special coating called brie wax which comes in several colors. So we had to pick out which version we wanted to use.

"You guys deliver too, huh?"

When they delivered the beams to the house, I've got to admit that's when it sunk in. I've got one shot with this board, and if I mess it up, it's messed up forever! So I hired an expert.

"Okay, this is Phil, he's my buddy. We go to church together and Covenant Homes. Seven at home, we're gonna put the beam up here, right?"

"Right, correct. Come in here on this crown bow. We're gonna leave that the baseboards to step crime that they have right here, right? And we're gonna leave the baseboard there to tie into this."

"So how are you gonna pull it up there? We're gonna have a gap between the beam and the ceiling?"

"No, after the two by fours were mounted where they were supposed to be, we began the notching process. This was way harder than I thought it would be! If we did it wrong, we could split the logs on accident, so we took our time and cut it out one pass at a time with a circular saw. We then chiseled out the rest of the material and we checked the fit."

"I feel—I feel like you're disrespecting the craftsmen that made this originally!"

"Oh man, look at how they drilled it! You think that was done by hand?"

"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah, that is cool! They do—I bet the guy on the ceiling and then the beam up it flush right on the ceiling will be able to push it up to the ceiling."

This is why Garland's flat sawmill is so important. You want it to be flush so that it looks like it's a structural element of the ceiling. We started by shimming the log up to the ceiling, but our notch was so tight that we couldn't get it pushed all the way up to the top. Even though we were using wedges under the 2x4, we didn't figure out the right way to do it.

"Why did you pull it off? It's not fair that you can stand on the ground and do that!"

The final few things are important because the devil's in the details. You've got to make it look like it was structurally put here, right? So we cut these plugs. It's important when you put the plugs in that you align the grain of the wood so that it looks like it was there on purpose. Okay, that's number one.

Number two, you ever see this peg from the mortise and tenon joint? Well, some dude cut this out with a knife 150 years ago. It kind of hurt my soul! But we cut it, and the reason we cut it is because I want to put it up here and that 2x4 is in the way. But if you put that peg in there and let it stick out, it looks like it was there on purpose. So anyway, it's kind of like an homage to the guy that originally did it.

Last thing, if he had a gap right here at the edge, it would be a dead giveaway that this is not structural. So we had to cover that up. What we did is we took that drop from Garland with a sawmill and made a picture frame so that we could use weathered-looking wood all the way to the edge of this faceplate here, and then we just terminated the crown molding right there. It looks like it's a structural beam!

I love these! I know it's a different video, but they make the house feel a lot more cozy. We also had a hand-hewn beam put right here. Garland gave us one of these as well. It makes the mantle look awesome! Everybody that comes in here comments on the look of these beams, and it's just an old house. Then we just put two beams up—it looks really neat, and the mantle matches.

I like it! Anyway, it makes a house a home, and cozy is the word!

Yeah, so this is another thing that makes a house a home. Hello Fresh is the sponsor for this video. It's awesome for several reasons: they deliver food to your house. I like food, good food, and I like it at my house! The ingredients are fresh and pre-measured, so you don't waste stuff. It's healthy, it's good—did I mention they send it to your house? Because they send it to your house!

It's so stinkin' easy even I can follow the recipes. We used to teach our kids how to cook! Seriously, this has been such a big deal for my family. We asked them to sponsor, and they said yes! So here's the deal: for $30 off the first week of Hello Fresh, visit hellofresh.com and enter the promo code SMARTE. Three different plans to choose from: classic, veggie, and family. Supporting the sponsor is a big deal for Smarter Every Day and all, but in this case, it's a big deal for you! Seriously, try it!

Alright, that's it! I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day. Feel free to subscribe if you're into that sort of thing. If you check out Southern Accents on the internet, they sell beams and stuff online. It's pretty cool! Big thanks to Hello Fresh, and that's it!

If you enjoy it, let me see pictures of your beams in your house! That was dumb; I have no idea why I said that. The next video is a collaboration with the Slow Mo Guys, so feel free to subscribe. It's worth it!

Anyway, I'm Destin, getting smarter every day. Have a good one!