Let the demolition begin!

Project #4: Removing Walls

This project is the first of many pertaining to the kitchen.  We felt that the kitchen had a few too many walls in it.  There was the kitchen, eat-in dining room and sitting room all broken up with walls.  We wanted to have an open feel to the space and combine all of these rooms into one large room, so we did! 

 

Before:

View from the kitchen toward the sitting room and the dinning area is to the right.  The two walls on the right are the ones we will remove.

The dining area with the kitchen to the right.  The wall on the right is one that we will remove.

 

View from kitchen into the dinning area beyond.  This wall will be removed.

 

In order to open up the kitchen it required us to demo two walls separating these three rooms.  One wall between the dining area and sitting area was easy because it was a non-load bearing wall, however the wall between the kitchen and the dining area was a load bearing wall supporting the 2nd floor and roof of the house. 

 

Demo:

Wall #1 Non-Load Bearing

 



 

Wall #2 Load Bearing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prior to demolition of the second wall we had to provide shoring of the floor joists on each side of the wall to support the second floor.  If we had not done this the floor and possibly the roof could have collapsed as we removed the wall prior to installing a support beam. We simply built temporary 2x4 walls on each side of the existing wall to support the 2nd floor above.  Luckily we have a structural engineer in the family (me) and I designed a new permanent beam to support the 2nd floor and roof above where we wanted to remove the wall as well as columns on each side to support this new beam.  



 

Wall #1 removed and the new beam and columns installed at the removed wall #2.