Painted
Beadboard
This past
summer we painted our farm kitchen, which is wooden bead board
wainscot and above that, horizontally laid bead board strips. Now
that that winter is here and the kitchen is being heated, there
are significant gaps showing up between most of these boards. Can
anyone recommend a product that will mend these gaps and give and
take with these type of seasonal changes and can be painted over?
-- Susan
The solution to your problem will not be found in a product.
Instead consider function, design and method.
Beadboard functions by expanding and shrinking due to changes in
moisture content from season to season, with a Tongue & Groove
joint to account for the change. The tongues slide within the
groves as the width of the boards changes. It is specifically
designed with a bead to decorate the joint so the gap at the
shoulder of the joint will still look good. Unless your beadboards
have shrunk so much that the tongues have pulled all the way out
of the grooves, your beadboard is probably working and looking the
way it should. So, gaps at joints are part of the function and
aesthetic of beadboard.
Filling gaps with any kind of caulk, sealant or filler now when
the boards are narrowest and the gaps widest will probably cause
problems next summer when the boards swell up and the gaps narrow,
squeezing out any filler or buckling the boards.
I suspect a big part of your seeing the gaps as a problem is that
stripes of unpainted wood are exposed to view. If this is correct,
then the method of recovery is to just paint the unpainted
stripes. Thin down the same top coat paint and apply it with a
narrow "stripping" brush. Do this right at the end of
the heating season when the gaps and stripes are widest. You want
to thin the paint so you applying just a little color, and don't
get a heavy buildup of paint inside the tongue & groove joint
that can "glue" the joints together and split the boards
when they expand and shrink in the future.
To keep this from happening in the future, paint your existing
beadboard when it is dry and the joints are widest. If you are
installing beadboard, brush a little of the top coat finish on the
tongues before they go up.
Pumping
Mortar
Have you had
experience with pumping mortar into a stone wall for a repointing
project? We had request to use the pump machine called the
Putzmeister, a company known for large concrete projects. They
want to pump the mortar into the voids and then finish the joint
by hand. My inclination is not to allow its use for this task, but
thought it would be good to hear your experiences and thoughts.
For the several
repointing projects I have been on, we have never come up with a
mortar formulation that that could be pumped, and would meet all
of the performance and appearance requirements. The consistency of
the appropriate mortar always seems to be far too thick and stiff
to move through any kind of pump or injection system. Any
additives to the mortar formula that would help it flow also
seemed to have a downside on performance or appearance.
You have to ask why they want to pump the mortar? Probably, it is
to increase the production rate or to decrease the overall cost of
the repointing. There may be other ways to achieve these
objectives, such as: reduce the amount of repointing needed by
doing only spot repointing (may require a closer visual match to
surrounding mortar); or, train the work crew in more effective
hand-and-trowel methods and techniques (some tradespeople are not
responsive enough to be trained, others are).
Of the few repointing projects I have seen that used mortar
pumping, there have always been problems that did not exist on
projects using hand-placement, such as: mortar slopping onto the
face of the masonry units resulting in a poor appearance or
requiring much more cleanup time and effort resulting in the loss
of any savings of mortar application time; or, shortened service
life due to mortar additives; or, shifting/jacking of the masonry
units and unintended filling of internal wall voids that need to
be left empty.
I have always found pumping to be problematic. While there may be
solutions to the problems and pumping may work effectively on some
projects, you may not be able to get involved with these sorts of
technical or organizational issues. If you have to make a quick
and simple "for or against" decision, I would suggest
"against" because I have seen many more successful
repointing projects with hand-placement, than with pumping.
No matter what placement method is used, repointing projects
should always have control over the mortar recipe, a strong
work-sampling or demonstration panel component, approvals of
samples and supervision of work to assure all work matches the
sample. If they can prove pumping works with effective work
samples right on the building, and that the mortar will be
long-lasting, they should have the opportunity to use it.
Learn more
about mortar and paint with a visit to the library at www.HistoricHomeWorks.com
Contact Leeke directly for answers to your questions and
more information on techniques for restoring and maintaining your
historic building. Write to John Leeke, Preservation Consultant at
26 Higgins St., Portland ME 04103,
207 773-2306; or by E-mail at johnleeke@HistoricHomeWorks.com
or visit his Internet Web Site at www.HistoricHomeWorks.com.
Live Video Conferences &
Replays:
http://historichomeworks.com/hhw/conf/vidconf.htm
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http://historichomeworks.com/forum/
© John Leeke
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