Do It Yourself

 Do It Yourself

    Our ceiling beams will save you money, and are just about the easiest way to get real antique wood beams into your house. Our ceiling beams walk many fine lines. Our beams are a product about balance. They are artificial beams, hollow and lightweight, but we make them out of real antique wood. They are technically aesthetic pieces, but they have all the character of a used, antique piece of wood.

you can see the runner boards, pre-install , right above the TV

Save Time, Effort, and Money    

     We want to talk about how our ceiling beams fit into DIY (do it yourself) culture. We are big fans of DIY: if we think we can fix our car, we'll pop the hood before we take it to the mechanic; we'll build a table before we buy one; we'll paint the rooms in our houses and apartments on the weekend.

     Our hollow box beams allow homeowners to install their own rustic beams, with help from just a friend or two. When you find yourself thinking about remodeling, there are few things that make as much of a statement as ceiling beams spanning the length of your kitchen, living room or bedroom. Ceilings beams are a bold and beautiful addition to any room. And our hollow ceiling beams are about the easiest way to get that look.

     When you are remodeling your home, it can be intimidating to think about ceiling beams. You will have to add structural support, you have to hire a team of builders, or rent a forklift or even a crane. You, or your builder, will have to cut through the drywall in your walls and build framing to support the beams. You are skipping days of work by using our hollow beams, which can be installed in a fraction of the time. We love building beams for new houses too, but the area where they really shine is adding them to an existing structure, a structure that doesn't need the support, but could benefit from the beauty of wooden beams. Our beams can be installed with 2 or 3 people, and all you need is a few runner boards to attach the beam to your ceiling. They are almost as easy as foam or rubber faux beams, but have all the life and character of real wood.

     Of course,  if you have your builder or remodeler install our beams in your home, they, and you, will save on days of labor being cut out.

     Another benefit of our beams is, since the insides of them are made out of plywood - an engineered product - they will bend and warp far less than a solid ceiling beam.

installed beams

A New Website

As we work on updating and moving our website, we will be doing blog posts on the content of our new website. While we work on publishing our much more user-friendly, more attractive, and more accessible website, we think this is a good time and opportunity to reintroduce the antique wood box beam. Stevi Gibson, our web designer, among many other things,     has created a side by side comparison chart on just what makes our rustic ceiling beams a great choice for anyone building or remodeling their home.

 

 Why use The Olde Mill Hollow Box Beams?

The Olde Mill Beams VS. Other Beams

    As Stevi’s chart illustrates, The Olde Mills ceiling beam walks the line between the convenience of hollow foam “faux” beams and the beauty of real, actual wood solid beams.   

While you can go buy a polyurethane beam that has been molded and stained to look like real wood in order to save time and money, we feel like anyone with an eye for detail and a love for antique wood can spot the difference. In our experience it is one thing to see photos of polyurethane beams and quite another to see them in person; the plastic beams just don’t have the gradation, character, or variation that makes real wood such a beautiful and interesting addition to your home. 

    On the other hand, real solid wood beams come with their own set of troubles. You want to buy real solid wood beams for their character and beauty, but simply procuring the beams can be a headache for you or your contractor, and there is usually little guarantee that your beams will match. Solid beams, especially reclaimed and antique ones, are often warped and twisted, leaving you will mismatched beams, which can make getting a matching set very difficult. Not to mention that solid beams, because they weigh a lot, will often need supporting structures in order to stay on your ceiling. If your house doesn’t need the beams for support (and most modern construction doesn’t), why go through the hassle?

    So, why our reclaimed wood hollow box beams? You get the beauty of rustic antique wood and the convenience, reliability, and durability of an engineered, manufactured product. Our beams are lightweight and easy to install (takes two men and a few 1 X 4 planks) because they are real reclaimed Longleaf Pine veneers laminated to a plywood core. You can keep the unfinished, raw look of our untreated Longleaf Pine, or stain the wood to your specifications. Every beam comes straight and untwisted, and to the exact length you need. You can order five or five hundred, and you know that each beam will be consistent.