Textures and finishes are a major component of timber frame homes. At first glance, it’s easy to assume that a timber home looks exactly like what it sounds like—a home made up of wooden beams and panels. But there are numerous ways to texture timber, each offering a specific look and feel.
At Hamill Creek, we offer a wide range of timber frame textures and timber frame finishes. Fortunately, we also offer expert advice on how to achieve the perfect look with your custom timber frame home design. Let’s look at some of the most popular ways to finish timber truss frames.
What Are the Different Textures Available for a Timber Frame?
There are a surprising number of timber frame textures available when building a custom home. When you combine the different textures with the number of available finishes, which include numerous stains, sealants, and colorations, the sky’s the limit for your creativity.
Some of the most popular textures include:
Hand-Hewn
This is the original timber frame texture. Hand-hewn wood is timber shaped by hand using tools like axes, drawknives, broad axes, and adzes. As you can imagine, shaping and finishing timbers using hand tools results in textural variation. While a machine can produce a perfectly smooth surface, hand tools cannot.
The oldest timber frame homes were all hand-hewn. Today, producing this kind of texture requires skilled craftspeople and time. That makes it expensive to produce, but the result is a one-of-a-kind texture that many consider extremely desirable.
A hand-hewn texture adds a truly rustic look and feel to a timber frame home.
Reclaimed Wood
While hand-hewn wood calls back to techniques of earlier times, reclaimed wood goes a step further—instantly displaying the history and the passage of time in a way no other texture can. Reclaimed wood is wood taken from structures that are going to be demolished and repurposed for use in modern timber frame builds.
Why is reclaimed wood so desirable? It’s so desirable because it cannot be reproduced no matter how skilled the woodworker is. Reclaimed wood features all of the splits, grooves, nail holes, and other marks that track its history. All of these visual and textural features come together to create something unique.
For many, building with reclaimed wood allows them to capture a piece of history. It demonstrates an appreciation for the art of building with wood and achieves a look that is impossible to replicate.
Planed Timbers
Not every timber home has to be rustic. Builders have created some truly magnificent modern visions using exposed timber, many using planned timbers. These machined timbers are made silky smooth using modern machinery to deliver clean, perfect lines and consistency that many home buyers value highly.
One advantage to using smooth-milled timbers is how well they absorb various stains and finishes. The combination of smooth milling and certain stains can accentuate wood grain in ways that are unachievable using other, rougher textures.
So Many Timber Frame Textures and Surfaces to Choose From
If you haven’t done much research about timber textures, you might be surprised at just how many options are out there. Some other options include:
- Hand planed – boards planed by hand using a scalloped blade to produce a slightly uneven surface
- Foot-worn – reclaimed wood from another structure that is preserved to maintain the foot-worn appearance
- Bandsaw surface – using a bandsaw blade in a specific way, the wood can be finished with a uniform appearance
- Chain saw finish – beams, and boards are finished with a carefully applied chainsaw blade to provide a consistent, rustic look
These are only a few of the options available. We can also use the shou sugi ban technique which is burnt wood as a special look unlike any other.
And remember, these are only the textures. Adding your preferred stain or other timber frame finishes further customizes the appearance of the wood.
Let Us Help You Choose the Perfect Texture
For some people, unlimited options are exciting. For others, they can be overwhelming. However you feel about all the available textures for your timber frame home, we want you to know that we are here to help. Our timber frame home design team can provide you with examples of just about any combination you can think of.
Get in contact with Hamill Creek today for expert guidance and turn your vision into a reality with our unrivaled knowledge and craftsmanship.