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I need an opinion about exposed beams vs. not exposed beams

Jeff
17 years ago

We are having the kitchen remodeled in our 1840 vermont farm house. I'm doing a lot of the work, but I'm also having a contractor come in to do work I can't, or don't want to do.

The kitchen is in an addition to the house, and it's probably over a hundred years old as well. It is sitting over a crawlspace, and over the years the house has settled. One corner of the room is 8" lower than the other corner. Many years ago, the foundation was "stabilized" and hasn't moved in over 30 years.

We have looked into releveling the foundation, but don't want to get that involved, for a few reasons:

-cost and time

-the house hasn't settled in a long time (no cracks in the 30 year old drywall).

-the kitchen is only part of a larger structure.

-the windows were put in after the building settled, and are now level. if we tilt the building the windows and doors will no longer be level.

We are going to put in a new subfloor over the old one, which is horizontal, using tapered beams.

The floor and ceiling are currently parallel to each other. After the "shims" are put in on the floor, one end of the room will have a much lower ceiling than the other. This will be a problem in that the ht. difference will be noticeable, especially in the space between the upper cabinets and the ceiling. So to fix this problem, we're talking about opening up the ceiling to the second floor (attic space) and creating a vaulted ceiling.

Now we have to decide if we want those lovely old hand hewn beams to be exposed or not. My concern suddenly is that if we leave them exposed we'll still have that reference line between the (horizontal) wall cabinet tops and the tilted beams.

How would it look if we covered up the beams with drywall? Is there a way we can keep some of them exposed, like the ones holding up the roof, or the ones going acroos the old ceiling (vs. yanking them out), and have it still look good?

I'd appreciate hearing any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance.

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