Exposed wood beam skinnier than supporting wall
mferg318
| Posted in General Discussion on
We are building a house and have an exposed wood beam between our living room and kitchen. The contractor installed a beam that is skinnier than the supporting wall, leaving a sloppy drywall edge at the ends and running along the top of the beam. They’ve cleaned it up as much as they can, but I’m still not happy with it. Anyone have any ideas on how to make this look like it wasn’t a mistake. Obviously, we could make him take the beam out and install a new one, but that’s a big undertaking at this point in the build.
Replies
The beam is as wide as the structure underlying the drywall, so this is (realistically) how it should look.
There are numerous styles of drywall trim moldings that can/could have made the edges of the drywall look better, but they would have had to be installed before the drywall & taping.
Personally I think it looks just fine, and if the beam were to match the overall width of the wall, including the drywall thicknesses, it would not look realistic. The beam would interrupt the supporting walls' drywall, resulting in an exposed beam running ito the corners. I'm not so sure you'd find that to be more aesthetically pleasing.
Thank you for the response. You may very well be right, but most of the examples I've seen show the beam at least as wide as the wall. I presumed this was to avoid the exact situation we are in. It's not the end of the world, but it does, however, look better in the pictures than it does in person. They originally had the beam trimmed with wood to cover the drywall edge, which looked even worse. Was just hoping someone else might have encountered this before and had a unique solution.
Just add another piece of 3/4-in stock to the beam.
If I simply tack on another piece of wood to the end, I'll have an exposed wood edge at the bottom...unless I wrap the whole thing, which I guess is an option. But the rest of the beams in the house are solid so I'm not too keen on wrapping just one, especially such a large one in a high visibility area.
Three choices.
1. trim, quarter round of some type, plastic or wood, probably look like what you had, might be better.
2. hack the drywall back and repair with a more finished end.
3. drywall the whole thing and you will never know the beam is there.
Thank you. I've considered these options previously except for #2. #3 is not really an option as having that exposed beam is important to us. Th only issue with #1 is that the reveal is not even all the way around the beam...the edge at the top of the beam is wider than the sides, the trim would have to be different. Perhaps I could just trip the top reveal, since it's the widest, and just try to clean up the ones on the end with some spackle, texture and paint?
One thing to try is some kind of trim that is bigger than the gap. (rather than trying to match the distance from the beam to the surface of the drywall)
No harm in doing a little at a time, too. change something, see how it looks... repeat.