Pole and beam in the centre of living area. How to finish?

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I'm a novice when it comes to timber finishing. We're building our home and we've got this post and laminated beam in the living area. They're both unfinished treated pine with the typical CCA green hue to them. I've sanded them both using 120 grit.

I was planning to stain them a dark brown (to hide the green) and then finish it all with something. The beam has some cracks I've filled with epoxy.

Can anyone give me some recommendations for finishing something like this? What do I put over the stained timber? Polyurethane?

Unless you do it really dark brown that pole is going to look rather s#!tty. Brown and green not being a handsome mix. Dark brown will also make the place look kinda dark. If it was my house I would paint the pole same as the walls and either oil or seal the beam in a clear shade to show the wood. If you are going to seal the wood floor then the same poly product would be fine.
Regards
John

some questions for you

what grade treatment is on the pole and beam -- eg is the pole H4 and the beam H1

my wife says that I'm functionally blind when it comes to colour, so staining is a whole area of difficulty. But to get from green to brown you need to add red. What shade of red and how much will be a matter of experimentation plus decisions as to whether to use a spirit or water based stain


lastly, how good was your dust collection when you sanded the treated pine? Should you be vacuuming the house and running a room air cleaner for a couple of days to collect all the dust that the sanding generated ?

+1 What Ian said about the dust.

Another thing you might consider is to clad the pole, maybe with left over floor boards.

Regards
SWK

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Originally Posted by ian

some questions for you

what grade treatment is on the pole and beam -- eg is the pole H4 and the beam H1

my wife says that I'm functionally blind when it comes to colour, so staining is a whole area of difficulty. But to get from green to brown you need to add red. What shade of red and how much will be a matter of experimentation plus decisions as to whether to use a spirit or water based stain


lastly, how good was your dust collection when you sanded the treated pine? Should you be vacuuming the house and running a room air cleaner for a couple of days to collect all the dust that the sanding generated ?

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The pole would be about H4 (it is a re-purposed old electricity pole)
The beam is made up of H3.2 4x2" laminated together

I collected most of the dust and bagged it for disposal. I'm planning to give the place a good vacuum before we go on with the build....

I would definitely paint that pole, no stain will improve it.

Three options I can see:

1. It could either be painted wall colour, as suggested above, or

2. You could make a feature of it like a totem pole of some kind.

3. One other suggestion for the pole would be the technique used in Victorian and up to Edwardian times called woodgraining. If you do an internet search you will find examples I'm sure and a few years ago there was a bit of a revival with tools and paints for woodgraining so you could probably find some. The technique is simply to use opaque brown wood-coloured paint as a background and then use brushes and special combs to paint/draw the figure/grain patterns of wood over that in darker colours. I don't know where in Australia you are but I have seen many original examples of woodgraining in Tasmania and some in Sydney. Country churches in Tasmania often had woodgraining over cheap pine instead of expensive timber and some of it was so well done that most people had no idea it wasn't 'real timber' such as oak or Mahogany.

Paint it, and then decorate it with hanging stuff.

Okay it's sounding like painting the pole would be the go.

What about the laminated beam? It's got a slight green tinge to it (not as much as the pole), and is otherwise kind of white in colour. I give it a clear finish I guess it's going to remain more of a cool white/green, which feels kind of cold and stark. I'd prefer a warmer finish if possible. Suggestions as to what to do with it...?

Trying to make unattractive bland timber look attractive and interesting? It always ends up looking like bland unattractive timber attempted to make it look interesting.

Paint it (ceiling colour to partially disappear it).

My father would just automatically paint that mission brown, regardless of anyone's opinion. Could do worse...:p

To be honest, cca is for outside. You shouldn't use it internally (or take it internally for that matter :wink:) So some nice thick paint would be the go.

What about the laminated beam?

Mission brown.

While I'm not overly happy about the re-purposed second hand power pole I don't think there's a significan health risk once the pole is painted.

working from first principles, I think I'd
1. paint the pole with 3 or 4 coats of heavy-cut shellac to seal the CCA treatment.
2. paint the pole with 3 or 4 coast of clear polyurethane
3. paint the pole "wood colour" and then use the technique suggested in post #6 to simulate wood grain.


I'm thinking that subsequent owners of your house might over paint the wood grain, but are unlikely to try and strip it back to bare wood.

Hi Ian,

I'm certainly concerned about health risks! Please elaborate..

How is using the pole any different to other CCA treated timber used in the construction of the house? The other timber from which the house is built is New Zealand pine and much of it is CCA treated. Is the pole more of a concern than, say, the window reveals, which are also CCA treated and will be covered only by a few layers of paint?

My concern is in relation to why the different levels of CCA treatment (H1 to H6) exist and the assumptions safety regulators might make in regard to those treatment levels. Note I'm saying MIGHT make. I have no knowledge of what assumptions they have made.
One possible assumption a regulator might make is that because internal timber is not exposed to the weather, only H1 or H2 pine will be used indoors. It then follows that any advice on the "safety" of CCA treated pine used indoors would be based on treatment levels H1 and H2, and not the H4 or H5 level that your re-purposed power pole will have been given.

I have no reservations about treated pine being "safe" when used as intended -- I'm just uncertain if "as intended" includes using H4 or H5 indoors.
Unfortunately I don't know who you might contact to seek clarification as all the information I've seen so far seems to assume that because of teh added cost, H4 and H5 will only be used where absolutely necessary, i.e. outdoors.

That's a really good point Ian. You've got me rather worried as we've been going to great lengths to build our family home in a low-toxic way (the use of CCA timber being the one noteable exception...a long story!).

Without knowing the exact manufacturer's safety advice for H5 CCA or whatever it is, can you suggest some measures I should take now to try to minimise any future health risks from what I've done (besides sealing the pole as you've suggested)? Should I go over the whole structure really carefully with the vacuum for instance and collect every bit of dust I can? Anything else I could do? Your thoughts on this would be hugely appreciated!

I'd go for numerous coats of red tinted lacquer and clear for the beam or wrap the post in heavy hemp rope up to the underside of the beam.

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Originally Posted by grapeseed

That's a really good point Ian. You've got me rather worried as we've been going to great lengths to build our family home in a low-toxic way (the use of CCA timber being the one noteable exception...a long story!).

Without knowing the exact manufacturer's safety advice for H5 CCA or whatever it is, can you suggest some measures I should take now to try to minimise any future health risks from what I've done (besides sealing the pole as you've suggested)? Should I go over the whole structure really carefully with the vacuum for instance and collect every bit of dust I can? Anything else I could do? Your thoughts on this would be hugely appreciated!

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the sanding you have done has probably spread a quantity of arsenic through the house.
there will be ways that you can vacuum up the residual dust or wash it off surfaces and of course personal hygiene is always important. Dust that will ultimately be sealed behind walls or under floor coverings will be less critical than dust on visible and usable surfaces.

I suggest you get yourself tested for accumulated arsenic -- from memory arsenic accumulates in your hair and finger nails.
This will give an indication of how much was released by your sanding and how diligent you need to be when cleaning up. Hopefully you collected almost all of the sanding dust while using your sander.


for the pole itself, I'm attracted to the idea of several seal coats followed by a faux wood grain effect.

I had a beam in my living room that was stained dark brown with the wood grain visible. I recently had to relace it (termites) and the choise of how to finish it came up. Eventually settled for the same colour as the walls, the dark beam disappeared and the room opened up, the improvment was dramatic.

FWIW, I did some research into power-poles recently and I'm pretty sure that the grid operators in Australia all require H5 treated timber, rather than H4.

Personally, I wouldn't be concerned about the health risk of CCA treated timbers - just seal them with paint or varnish. I would be slightly concerned about the dust, but from what I've read, the chemical makeup of CCA treatment means that the arsenic compounds that are formed are actually quite a bit less toxic than elemental arsenic.