Old beams maintenance when restoring and renovating property in France

Adding a new floor with visible beams

Building a new floor with beams

Sometimes your ruin or barn will have a shell and need a whole new first floor adding or replacing.

To add a complete new floor with exposed beams is practical but quite a large job. In principle you are simply going to build the new floor and not plasterboard the underside. If you are starting from scratch you can even put plasterboard on top of the beams, so that from below you have a 'proper' ceiling on top of the beams.

Firstly you will need a structural engineer or similar to tell you what size of beams to use for your particular floor size, and the spacing between them  - 60 centimetres is usual.

These beams can then either be set into holes made in the wall, or supported by brackets. Again these are critical points for the strength of the floor, and must be as recommended by a qualified person. It is sometimes suggested that beams set into the wall are more likely to be affected later by damp problems, because of humidity in the wall being absorbed by the wood.

The problem at this stage is largely one of getting the level exactly right. With brackets it will be reasonably easy, but holes set in an old stone wall are rough and ragged. Wedges of wood should be used to hold the floor level in position until the spaces around the beams are refilled. In any event, lifting the beams into place will be a very heavy job (needing a hoist), so it is likely you will need professional help with this.

If the beams are to left exposed you should specify that sanded wood be used for all the visible faces, rather than rough 'building' wood.

After the beams / joists are in place, the rest is straightforward. It is simply a matter of choosing what level of sound insulation you want between the two floors and adding the floor itself...

 

Typical options for the floor itself (materials in order starting from the bottom orf the floor):

 

Option 1

plasterboard, to be visible as a ceiling from the downstairs rooms, then

chipboard, ideally 22mm thick, tongue and groove; then

sheets of sound insulation eg thick felt sold specially for the purpose; then

flooring parquet

 

Option 2

strips of sound insulation along the tops of all the beams (this sound insulation is sold instrips 6cm or 7 cm wide), then

chipboard, tongue and groove; then

sheets of sound insulation eg thick felt sold specially for the purpose; then

a second layer of chipboard, tongue and groove; then

thin 'polystyrene' type sound insulation; then

flooring parquet

 

Option 3

Simply fit floorboards straight to the beams! This is the traditional approach but offers little to stop sound passing between the two levels. You will need good, solid real wood floorboards to cross a 60cm space between the beams.