The layout. The offending wall must go.

So I want to remove a (load bearing) wall. The main living area of my house, encompassing a living room dinning room (greatish sort of room), entry and kitchen is 3/4 vaulted. The great room and entry are vaulted, the kitchen has a standard ceiling. The kitchen is separated from the entry by a wall that I want removed.  I started looking around for contractors, contacted about 4. Only one followed up with a visit to check it out/quote it. He spent about 30 minutes, took notes, said he’d get his engineer out to take a look and quote it. He never called back. So what’s a self respecting curmudgeon to do? Roll up the sleeves and tear it down.

Left – elevation of the ‘current’ situation. Right – elevation of the desired situation.

So here’s the plan. I contemplated vaulting the kitchen root by running 2×8 rafters and removing the trusses. But my scaled back plan already had me nervous and sleepless, so I’d definitely need a contractor for that and that’s how we find our selves DIYing it in the first place. Plus there’s a gas line that would require moving, probably significant re-wiring since there’s not a lot of slack in the wiring. And, to avoid work, I convince myself I like the ceiling in the kitchen for lighting and stuff.

This is how it was; no pics with drywall installed. The trusses hung out over… nothing. They were basically supporting the roof deck up to the ridge beam.

So the first step is to shorten the trusses to remove the ‘box’ suspended in space. That means leaving the top span of the truss connected to the ridge beam supporting the rafters on the vaulted 3/4 of the space; so I’ll remove the vertical ends of the trusses and cut the lower truss members even with the edge of the top plate on the existing wall. The truss will get ‘rebuilt’ with a vertical member from the top span to the bottom span, even with the existing top plate. The the cross truss members will get tied into the new vertical member. Also tie the cross member directly to the bottom truss span for support.

The box to nowhere removed, vertical and cross members of the truss rebuilt and re-attached, 2×8’s crippled into the top truss members.

The next step is to cripple in 2x8s on the top span of the truss back to where I can drop a support to the bottom of the truss and tie it into the existing ridge beam at the roof peak. This (hopefully) provides support to the roof deck for the 1.5 foot span beyond the existing wall as well as provides a flush nailing surface for drywall even with the rest of the vaulted ceiling. With the roof/truss all sorted – I hope – go on to remove the wall.

The full stripped wall, ready to move electric and be removed.

I already pulled one side of the drywall to get the lay of the land, so the next step is to pull down all the drywall on the current wall.  There’s some electrical to be re-worked here since those two outlets are mounted where there will be no wall anymore and the switch box needs to move over to the left on the new post once it’s in. So there’s a day on the electric; basically, the existing lines are too short to accommodate new locations on the outlets, so I put two junction boxes in the attic. The outlet on the left just gets moved over to under the switch box mounted on the new post. The outlet on the right moves all the way over to the right onto a new stud that I put up – the top plate continues on to the rest of the house, so I just added a new stud to define the end of the new beam where the post will go, cleaned up the drywall and put an extra stud in to provide a nailing surface for the drywall (no images until the end product of that). Interestingly, that outlet continues on to the refrigerator (horizontal line disappearing to the right). I have a GFI on the fridge, but it’s on the wall behind the fridge – if it trips, I have to pull the fridge out to reset. Now it hasn’t tripped in 10+ years, so no biggie, but I figured that since I have the circuit figured out, I’ll put a GFI on the moved outlet and replace the fridge outlet with a standard outlet so I have easy access in case it ever trips. I think code specifies that the fridge should be on its own circuit… Now as you can tell, normally I’m all about code, but here I let it slide and left an extra outlet on the fridge circuit just as the house was originally wired.

 

The temporary support wall constructed and in place.

Well, now I’m running out things I can procrastinate on; time to get on with it and remove the wall. I leave instructions with friends to call for a rubble extraction team if they don’t hear from me in 12 hours and dive in. First step is to build a temporary support wall that will support the ceiling and roof until the new beam is in. So I cut some spacers at 18″ for a consistent spacing on the floor and ceiling from the existing wall, connect the top plate to the trusses and the bottom plate to the spacers which are tied into the bottom plate of the original wall. Add in vertical studs between and voila, a temporary support wall. I hope.

OK, so now I have absolutely nothing I can use as an excuse. Time to remove the old wall.

The studs and bottom of the double top-plate removed. At this point, the temp wall is doing all the work of keeping the roof off my head.

That goes pretty smoothly and I’m not wearing my roof as headgear, so that’s good. Now it’s time to put the posts and beam in. For the beam, I went with a double 2×10 – for this span, really should be 2×12 at least I think, but I’m living on the edge. Since a doubled up 2×10 will only be about 3 inches wide and the posts/existing wall are 3.5 inches (2×4), the beam will be spaced out with a 1/2 inch plywood core. That also allows room for the electric lines to come down through the beam. Rather than build the beam and lift it into place which will be awkward, I decide to build it in place. So I put one 2×10 up lined up with the inside wall and clamp it into place with supports below. Note I left the top piece of the old top plate in place which is securely fastened to the trusses. To secure the beam, I put in 4″ GRK structural screws down through the top plate into the 2×10. With the beam in place, I mount the 1/2 plywood spacing with construction adhesive and tacked in – in the end I’ll use structural screws to joining the beams so the plywood just need to be held in place for now. The next step is to add the next 2×10 on the outside edge. It’s the same procedure, clamp in place, fasten with structural screws to the top plate. The 2x10s are then screwed together through their faces with structural screws again. Now all that remains is to add the new posts to actually support the beam and carry the load. These are just 2 2x4s on each end of the beam cut to the correct length. On the left side, I also put in an extra vertical stud so that when drywall goes in, the outlet and switch box wouldn’t just be hanging out in the middle of nowhere. Remove the temporary wall and the bottom plate and the major bits are done.

Upper left – First 2×10 in place, with small section of spacer on the left. Upper right – full spacer in place. Lower left – second 2×10 in place and attached. Lower right- posts in place (note blocking on the right side for drywall attachment.

 

Well just started really. Now I have to drywall, though that will wait until the kitchen is done. Which means… I have to pull up about 1000sq ft of tile. The tile comes up easy, the thin set, not so much. I got about 42sq ft up with a hand sledge and chisel, but, while my forearm is pretty damn strong (for reasons), it can only get so big before I start frightening small children and have to start eating spinach. And I hate oxylates. So I think I’ll go buy a rotary hammer drill and see how that works. And after the re-tiling is done, I just need to design the kitchen, build some cabinets, re-work some plumbing lines, pour some concrete counter tops… sigh.

The final product. Where final means structurally sound one hopes, but still need a lot of work around it and then the finish work.

Bonus music link.  Walls.