How We Installed Real Wood Faux Beams in the Kitchen

If you love the look of beams but hate the price tag that comes along with them, I’m sharing how we DIYed these real wood faux beams on a budget!

It’s no secret that I’ve been longing for some wooden beams in our kitchen for a few years now. I often took scrap pieces of lumber and held it up as high as I could on the ceiling trying to image how it’d look. I drew sketches of what I imagine it’d look like. Scouring Pinterest for all the pictures of beams in a kitchen…You get the idea…I had it bad. I knew there had to be a simple, inexpensive solution. That’s when I found out about these real wood faux beams.

I wish I could rewind back to 1890 and see this house when it was originally built. I’d love to see how the kitchen was laid out, and how the housewife of the day made it work for her. I do know that our kitchen now was originally a long back porch. Sometime in the 1960s they closed the back porch in and made it the kitchen. The kitchen was originally where our dining room is now.

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Since the kitchen was a back porch there was NO character. None. At. All. It was basically a drywall rectangle when we moved in. Truth be told, the entire house was pretty void of character. Everything had been completely renovated sometime in the 1980s. I’m very thankful that people took good care of this old house, but man, oh man, do I wish they would’ve left some of the beadboard and original shiplap exposed…Anyway, back to the beams…

Have you met Andrea from Pine and Prospect Home?

This idea for real wood faux beams is not my own. It belongs originally to Andrea from Pine and Prospect Home. If I could snap my fingers, and have my home decorated like anyone else’s, it’s Andrea’s. She has that English country cottage vibe, and I LOVE it. Her kitchen is surprisingly similar to my own, and when she shared her faux beams, I KNEW that was the way we’d do ours.

Fast forward three years, and we finally got them done. ha! That is just the way project go around here.

What we used for Real Wood Faux Beams

• 2×6 pine boards (we used 10 footers)
• Plastic hollow wall anchors #8-10
• 2.5-inch wood screws
• Cordless drill
• 1/8- and 1/4-inch drill bit
• Chop saw
• Measuring tape
• Pencil
• Stain of your choice
• Rag or brush to apply stain
• Tools to distress boards – chisel, screwdriver, hammer, chain, etc.

We followed her tutorial to the letter…

Essentially, we did everything the way Andrea did, and in the order she did them. Her full tutorial is here: https://www.pineandprospecthome.com/easiest-faux-beams-ever/

The only area I veered off her tutorial was when we stained our boards. My husband works crazy hours, and we never know when he’ll be home. I took advantage of a beautiful early March day and stained the boards before they were cut. I had previously distressed them with a chisel, and a hammer. If you have pent up aggression, this is a good way to get rid of that. I really went to town on a few of them, and chiseled off a good hunk on each side. I LOVED this part.

Choosing stain is notoriously difficult for me. I stuck to an old faithful and went with Early American from Minwax. It’s a nice warm tone, and it adds a lot of old-world charm, I think. I’m very pleased with how they turned out.

The weather has been so dreary, so I didn’t get the best shots of the kitchen. Hopefully when the sun comes back this way, I can take better pictures. I just couldn’t wait to share these!

Now…about the bottoms of those kitchen cabinets…

If you read my post the other day, I said we may talk about what’s happening under my kitchen cabinets. If you take a look at the third picture in this post, you’ll likely see a strip of black, and some cabinet “feet”. Well, that’s construction paper. I’ve been playing around with the idea of custom cabinet feet, so I drew out a shape I thought I’d like.

I’ve had them taped to the cabinet for weeks, and honestly, sometimes I forget it’s just paper. 😀 I’ve got some scrappy pieces of plywood out in the garage, and I’m hoping to play around with the jig saw some to see if I can get some custom feet cut out soon. I’m also toying around with painting the toe kick area black to really help those custom feet “pop”. Construction paper is much less messy than slapping some paint on as a trial run. 😉

I’d love to hear if you’ve been DIYing lately! Let me know below!! As always thanks so much for stopping by and spending a tiny part of your day with me. I appreciate you!

Here’s an image to pin for later…

Here’s an image to pin for later…