Charred Cedar Roof Decking

Back in July, April and I debated about how the roof decking should complement the stained timber frame in our outdoor kitchen. At first, we considered some kind of white paint treatment on the roof deck, but I was never sold on the idea. Long story short, we decided to do a total 180 on the whitewash idea — I charred cedar instead, yakisugi style. Here’s how it looks.

Charred Roof Decking

This was basically another excuse for me to whip out the propane torch and burn up some lumber. But really though. The thought of the outdoor kitchen at night, with some subtle lighting pointed up at the roof deck with luscious alligator skin texture was too good to pass up. And so the torch came out indeed.

Red cedar? Doesn’t it look pretty good by default? Well, sure, but to my eye only in certain contexts. The chocolatey brown stain finish on the oak timber frame needed something pretty specific to go with it. 

Yakisugi Cedar

Next time, I’m going to have to try out the triangle fire method. Using a torch on 360 square feet of wood (which isn’t even that much) is tedious business. Fun for a little while, but it’s slow going… preparing and burning all of that wood took a good chunk of time.

Unlike the oak timber frame from last year, I left the char intact on these cedar boards. (No brushing or burnishing the char afterwards.) I wanted the full textural effect.

In hindsight, however, I should have probably left the surface of the cedar rough sawn instead of planing it. I noticed a certain amount of grain raising (for lack of a better word) when burning the surface of the wood. Across some sections of wood, the char would kind of pop and “lift off” the surface just a hair, revealing the red wood below. That doesn’t seem to happen when the wood surface is rough. 

It’s not that noticeable in the finished building, luckily, but it did give me pause for future projects where the wood might be closer to eye level.

For the finishing touch, I brushed on a heavy coat of Heritage Natural Finishes Exterior Finish. An oil finish helps stabilize the soot. Since this wood will be up high and basically never touched again, it may not matter much, but I still think it’s beneficial to throw some oil on.

So far so good… can’t wait to wrap up this building!