Need advice on removing weight-bearing wall
I want to remove a wall on the ground floor of the three-story frame house I’m buying in the South Slope. I’ve heard everything from “That’s not hard,” to “Whoa, you need a structural engineer in addition to a contractor.” Our inspector said it looked like we just need to leave 8 inches of the…
I want to remove a wall on the ground floor of the three-story frame house I’m buying in the South Slope. I’ve heard everything from “That’s not hard,” to “Whoa, you need a structural engineer in addition to a contractor.” Our inspector said it looked like we just need to leave 8 inches of the wall at the top. But it seems a column or two might be needed as well. I’d really appreciate any advice from someone who has done or had this type of work done, and for names of contractors who could do it. Among the things I’m wondering: Will this be expensive? Take a long time? How much of a mess will the floor be in when the wall is gone? Thanks for all input.
Our job sounds very similar to Tom’s. We removed a wall in our rear parlor, installed a beam above plus a post running vertically all the way down into a footing deep below the cellar floor. The work was planned by our architect, done by our GC and supervised by a structural engineer. I want to say the cost was about $30k but this was in 2000 and was part of a whole house renovation.
A contractor quoted us 60K just for the structural work to remove the load bearing wall on the garden level. That was to put up columns in the basement and add an I-beam in place of the wall. btw our house is ony 32′ deep. Even if we did all the labor ourselves the cost would still be around 20K.
That’s just a ballpark figure, but it was way out of our league. We’re just going to open up part of the wall and make an archway like Stacey.
I did this on the parlor floor level. I hired and engineer that gave me a plan on what was needed and I executed it. I had to start in the basement with a new column where the wall is (measuring very acurately). I went down 16 inches into the ground below the cellar floor with concret and rebar for the footing of the column. The top caught the beams below the point where the wall was coming out. Above where there was no load bearing wall (someone removed whatever held up the wall originally). I added a new column with a beam running to an existing column. The beam touches the floor joists so the ceiling gets the plaster ripped out til you touch the beams. On the parlor floor I tore down the wall and put two more columns with a beam against the joists. It is a big job. I got it done in a couple of weeks. It is heavy work. Get an engineer
I had to do the same thing but I was told that you must leave something there (as Anon points out). We decided to remove only a portion of the weight-bearing wall and created an archway. I have pictures of how it looked before and after – if you are interested you can e-mail me at stacey0768@aol.com
I’m not going to do anything that endangers anyone, or the house.
We had some load bearing walls removed when we did some renovation work on our house. It was part of a bigger job which required architects, engineers, building permits, and landmarks approvals. I couldn’t say if you would need the same. But the job is not trivial. How wide is the opening you are hoping to make? Our work involved jacking the house up, taking the walls out, inserting steel beams to support the walls, and praying the house didn’t fall down (the contractor’s words, not mine). I can’t imagine how you can remove a load bearing wall without providing an alternative method to support the wall (i.e. leaving 8 inches of wall, presumably just hanging there, doesn’t do it). Lolly columns, steel beams, or some other way to support the walls must be necessary, I would think. I can’t say I’d be thrilled to be your neighbor when I found out you didn’t have an engineer/architect making sure the load is properly re-distributed and the house fell down.