Decoration of Exterior Timber-Frame Timbers

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Hi,

I have a large late-Victorian (1893) house, the front elevation of which is part timber-framed (above the ground floor) - i.e. ‘mock-tudor’ (‘black and white’); the rest of the walls, including the ground floor at the front, are brick. I don’t have a decent photo to hand, but the iffy one below shows a bit of the front, to give the general idea.

The front of the house is looking very tired and well due for re-decoration, but information/ advice about what to do with the (I presume oak) timbers is very varied. The ‘ideal’ seems to be to never paint them at all, but with 120+ years of goodness how many layers of (black) paint/whatever already on them, it’s a bit late to think about that (I'm certainly not going to contemplate trying to 'strip' the timbers')!

I’m pretty sure that, when it was last painted, some sort of bitumin-based paint was used for the timbers. However, that is presumably fairly ‘waterproof’ and current thinking seems to be that that is likely to trap water in the timbers (some is bound toi get in), leading to potential deterioration - something ‘breathable’ therefore being preferable.

Creosote might have been an option in the past, but not any more. Is bitumin-based definitely a bad idea? Linseed-oil based paints are the one of the options I’ve seen mentioned, but I’m not very keen on the very long drying time (particularly since it will probably be done when the weather is not too hot). I’ve seen suggestions that one just ‘oils’ it, and even that one should use exterior emulsion paint - but, apart from anything else, I’m not sure whether approaches like that would work over whatever is already on the timbers. What about things like some of the Cuprinol and Sadolin products? What else to consider?

So, I really have no idea which way to go and would welcome any thoughts/ suggestions and/or pointers to good sources of information or advice! Many thanks.

View attachment 113704

Kind Regards, John
 
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