We'd rather tell you why we don't publish a price list than publish one that means nothing for your house. Two ceilings that look identical in a photo can take very different amounts of time to restore, and the gap between them is usually invisible until someone is stood underneath the beam with a ladder.
The variables that actually drive the price
These are the things we're weighing up from your photographs and the Beam Check, roughly in order of how much they move the number:
- How many beams, and how much of the room they cover. A single fireplace bressumer is a different job to a full exposed-beam ceiling running the length of a house.
- What's currently on the surface. Old black paint, decades of soot, or a previous coating applied by someone else all behave differently and take different amounts of work to treat.
- Access. A ground-floor room with a standard ceiling height is straightforward. A vaulted hall, a stairwell, or beams above a fitted kitchen changes the time on site considerably.
- Condition of the timber itself. Sound, dry oak behaves predictably. Beams with historic woodworm, damp staining, or previous repair work need more careful handling.
- How many rooms, and whether they're contiguous. A whole-house job has different economics to a single feature beam over a fireplace.
What that price includes
Whatever the final figure, the scope around it doesn't change. No sanding, no blasting, no dust: the process is applied with brushes, non-hazardous and virtually odourless — there's no need to move out, no secondary works, and no replastering, redecorating, or preparatory work required afterwards. You're not budgeting for a skip, a decorator to follow us in, or a week out of the house on top of the restoration itself. For a historic property, that also means no historic material is removed — the finish is built up in three fine coats, and nothing is taken away.
Why we don't publish a generic figure
Every price list you'll find is either so vague it's meaningless, or so specific it doesn't survive contact with an actual ceiling. We'd rather give you an accurate number after seeing clear photographs of the beams than a rough one before we have.
That's what the Beam Check exists for — a short set of questions about your property that lets us give you a genuinely useful answer, including whether restoration is worth doing at all, before either of us commits to anything.