How To Remove a Load Bearing Wall – Part 1

by Kim Fauth (email Kim) | May 19, 2010 | 5 Comments »

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This article is part 1 of a three part series covering removing a load-bearing wall.

• Part 1 – Preparing for Load Bearing Wall Removal
• Part 2 – Removing Part of a Load-Bearing Wall – Demolition
• Part 3 - Before Closing Up a Load-Bearing Wall

Preparing for Load Bearing Wall Removal (Part 1)

I mentioned last week the we were at the bidding point with our load-bearing wall removal project.  Since then, we have selected our contractor team, and work has started on the project.

For any of you who weren’t with us in January, this is the last wall to be removed in the conversion to an open floor plan in our home.  It’s the blue wall in the floor plan below.  We removed the non-load bearing walls identified in red during the Christmas-to-New-Years break.

We threw in the pantry-removal (green box below), faux-paneling removal in the family room, and a couple other small items to make this job big enough to dignify a bid from each of our general contractors.

And so this morning, here’s where we started. This is a picture of our the family room (which you can identify on the floor plan above).

This is a picture of the other side of the same wall, in the living room. (Actually, we’re planning to use it as a dining room after the conversion).

(The drywall work you already see here is from the non-load bearing wall removal project last December. And no, we haven’t ever gotten around to patching the drywall… That’s not a problem though; we just added it to the contractor’s scope.)

The first step in this job is for our carpenter to open up the wall for the engineer to inspect the job, and then give his stamp of approval on the plans and materials (including which kind of lumber to buy for the header).

What we also learned today:

1. That the location of our ductwork (which we don’t care to pay to move) is going to mean that our opening needs to be smaller than our original 8′ plan and also will be a little right-of-center on the wall.  We could have shrunk it further to keep it totally centered on the wall, but we’re talking inches.  I’d rather have the space, so I asked our contractor to frame it from the far left stud to the far right in the above picture (you can see where he drew the original opening lines there too).

2.  We have 14′ joists supporting the 2nd floor of the house, so there will need to be temporary walls built on BOTH sides of the wall before the removal happens (if we’d had 16′ joists, they would’ve built the temporary wall on one side only because there would’ve been a greater overlap area under which to support the whole weight of both sides of the house).

3.  One of our joists is a bit crushed and is splintering.  We want to address that when the guys return on Friday.  It may not need anything, but we’ll check.

4.  True to our style, our scope is creeping.  It occured to us that running the wiring for the recessed lighting in the family room would be easier while the drywall was all down, so we’ve decided to add that to the contractor’s scope.

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This article is part 1 of a three part series covering removing a load-bearing wall.

• Part 1 – Preparing for Load-Bearing Wall Removal
• Part 2 - Removing Part of a Load-Bearing Wall – Demolition
• Part 3 - Before Closing Up a Load-Bearing Wall

by Kim Fauth | | | May 19, 2010
Filed in: Construction | Related Tags: guide

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