EXPANDING DOORWAY, ADDING DOOR--??

hello. we want to expand the doorway to the living room of our brownstone (it is very narrow and looks weird), and add french doors and molding. do we need a carpenter? a contractor? or…? any recommendations for someone who could do this job well? thank you.

chelseagirl

in Carpenters and Woodworkers 12 years and 11 months ago

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Rick | 12 years and 11 months ago

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Not a big deal. You can see examples of my work at RickLaddBrooklyn.com

callalily | 12 years and 11 months ago

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Get a finish carpenter. As Steve says, you can work it out so the new framing bears weight. The finish carpenter can add molding to more or less match what you have and make it look nice. It may turn out you once had pocket doors with a wide opening there, and someone covered the opening to break the house into apartments.

stevecym | 12 years and 11 months ago

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Look, we do these all the time.  As for the load bearing comments, we are not architects and sometimes I ask the customer to get an architect – and many times they are so confident that the wall is not load bearing (we usually have a pretty good idea) that they ask me to proceed; we do and we treat the wall as load bearing and since we have to install a header anyway, we just build an oversize header (err on the side of caution) and bill for the same. Steve

http://brownstoner.staging.wpengine.com/tinkerswagon

pigthree | 12 years and 11 months ago

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many people beleive and many will tell you walls are loadbearing when they are not.

Arkady | 12 years and 11 months ago

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Many of those doors are in load-bearing walls so I’d certainly get a professional to look before you ask a trades to give estimates.