We are restoring a 500 year old farm house in Tuscany. It has lots of
lovely rough hewn wooden beams, many with worm holes. Some of the beams
are very dark-which I do not like as it is quite dark already in parts
of the house and one room will have fairly low ceilings. Some beams
seem to have been re-adzed...letting the nice honey coloured wood show.
Our carpenter says that the wood is a local cypress. Some people say do
not sand blast as it makes the wood have a horrible patina, some say
just scrub the wooden, the rough hewn wooden ceiling and beams in
another room...some say use acid to make the wood lighter....my
question is what is the easiest and cheapest way to bring the wood back
to its natural lighter colour and what is the best way to treat worms,
is there a natural alternative also?What finishes and treatments are
best? Some also say that cypress beams have a wonderful smell for
years, if we re-adze which will be very difficult without taking the
beams down, how can we release this smell again? Is there a product we
can use to scrub the wood and bring it back to the lighter colour?There
also are 'çotto' tiles used in the ceiling, which are terracotta tiles
used between the strips of wood in Tuscan celings, some of these are
whitewashed and will need to be sand blasted.

"Rose" wrote in message
oups.com...
We are restoring a 500 year old farm house in Tuscany. It has lots of
lovely rough hewn wooden beams, many with worm holes. Some of the beams
are very dark-which I do not like as it is quite dark already in parts
of the house and one room will have fairly low ceilings. Some beams
seem to have been re-adzed...letting the nice honey coloured wood show.
Our carpenter says that the wood is a local cypress. Some people say do
not sand blast as it makes the wood have a horrible patina, some say
just scrub the wooden, the rough hewn wooden ceiling and beams in
another room...some say use acid to make the wood lighter....my
question is what is the easiest and cheapest way to bring the wood back
to its natural lighter colour and what is the best way to treat worms,
is there a natural alternative also?What finishes and treatments are
best? Some also say that cypress beams have a wonderful smell for
years, if we re-adze which will be very difficult without taking the
beams down, how can we release this smell again? Is there a product we
can use to scrub the wood and bring it back to the lighter colour?There
also are 'çotto' tiles used in the ceiling, which are terracotta tiles
used between the strips of wood in Tuscan celings, some of these are
whitewashed and will need to be sand blasted.

As far as lightening the beams try a solution of oxalic acid, it being a
mild bleach which works better on some woods than others