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Hi,
I live in an older house in downtown Atlanta in one of those “emerging” neighborhoods. The home is listed as being about 70 years old although I haven’t verified that yet. Anyway, it is what you might consider a blue collar neighborhood and the original house was maybe 700 sqft but received an addition maybe 15 years ago to make it 1100 sqft. The next to the last owner was a carpenter by trade and he did the renovations. Two major trim portions of the house were done in rough sawn lumber (photos attached). One is the beam casing between the living room and dining room and the other is the front windows in the “sunroom” which was built over half of the original porch. In the almost two years we have been here, we have renovated half the house replacing the carpet with hardwoods and I have started trimming out the new doorways with beaded mouldings with rosettes.
The purpose of my post is this: do any of you finish carpenters ever get requests for rough sawn trim work around doors and the like? Originally I abhorred the rough sawn work that was done, but it has grown on me. In addition, I think it retains a certain character of the house. The guy probably didn’t use rough sawn by choice, he was probably poor. If I renovate the house with hardwoods, nice tile, transom windows, skylights, etc, then maybe the future owners won’t know that this was once a working man’s house. So now I’m mulling over the idea of actually doing some rough sawn trim work. Some of the jambs which are completed won’t be changed, so there will be a mixture. I know this is a rhetorical post and I’m not looking for an answer as to whether or not to do it. I would just like your input from your experiences.
Thanks.
Jon
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This is the second attachment...
*Personally, it doesn't do much for me. I've put in rough sawn cedar (stained not painted) beams in family rooms and such, then gone back a few years later to see the dust clinging all over them. They don't dust off. I suppose its a matter of taste. I love antiques, but those primitive looking pieces with the peeling paint and such (which can be quite valuable) don't do anything for me either.John
*Cedar is kind of stringy when it's rough sawn and would collect a lot dust just like JRS said. Other woods like oak do better. I can't say I like the painted roughsawn look. Big beams look good to me if they have a little texture. I try to explain to my clients the difference between hand hewn and planed and just plain rough from the saw mill. I think our great great grandads would walk into one of these $500,000 homes with all kinds of rough sawn beams and "antiqued" furniture and say "what the hell kind of carpenter did this, and when is he coming back to finish it? But that's just me.
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Hi,
I live in an older house in downtown Atlanta in one of those "emerging" neighborhoods. The home is listed as being about 70 years old although I haven't verified that yet. Anyway, it is what you might consider a blue collar neighborhood and the original house was maybe 700 sqft but received an addition maybe 15 years ago to make it 1100 sqft. The next to the last owner was a carpenter by trade and he did the renovations. Two major trim portions of the house were done in rough sawn lumber (photos attached). One is the beam casing between the living room and dining room and the other is the front windows in the "sunroom" which was built over half of the original porch. In the almost two years we have been here, we have renovated half the house replacing the carpet with hardwoods and I have started trimming out the new doorways with beaded mouldings with rosettes.
The purpose of my post is this: do any of you finish carpenters ever get requests for rough sawn trim work around doors and the like? Originally I abhorred the rough sawn work that was done, but it has grown on me. In addition, I think it retains a certain character of the house. The guy probably didn't use rough sawn by choice, he was probably poor. If I renovate the house with hardwoods, nice tile, transom windows, skylights, etc, then maybe the future owners won't know that this was once a working man's house. So now I'm mulling over the idea of actually doing some rough sawn trim work. Some of the jambs which are completed won't be changed, so there will be a mixture. I know this is a rhetorical post and I'm not looking for an answer as to whether or not to do it. I would just like your input from your experiences.
Thanks.
Jon