Remove Walls On First Floor Of Two Story Home

Part one of this series on rewiring electrical of a two story home begins with an obvious issue.

Remove walls on first floor of two story home.

These interior walls have defined floor plans for centuries but starting in the 1950s when the open floor plan style became popular many of these walls segmenting the house fell into disfavor. In this story we ll show you how to remove nearly any wall and tell you how to add a structural beam if it s needed. These are large pieces of lumber going across the house from side to side supporting the floor roof and are generally 16 apart. Cost to remove a load bearing wall.

New construction began to favor the great room look in which kitchen dining and living spaces were. This wall breaks up the span of the second floor joists. It may be scary to think about tearing walls out of your house but don. This article won t be comprehensive enough for you to do the entire job on your own.

Interior walls create privacy define spaces and sometimes bear the weight of the level above. The walls that are perpendicular to the rafters and connected to them will be load bearing. Owners of older homes often want to have a more open floor plan so they remove walls to get the more open look. First determine if the wall you want to remove is a load bearing wall meaning it supports the floor above.

When you replace a load bearing wall with a load bearing beam you create a larger more useful floor area and give your home a feeling of spaciousness. For a two story home you will typically have a load bearing wall on the first floor close to the center that runs perpendicular to the floor joists. Let s say you have a vaulted room for example. Heating plumbing and electrical lines will have to be rerouted.

If you are removing a load bearing wall in a home with a single level project costs will range from 1 200 to 3 000 for multi level homes expect to pay between 3 200 and 10 000 exact prices will depend on the size and project scope. I am working on removing a load bearing wall in the first floor of a 2 story house. And sometimes moving those lines is a huge task so difficult that removing the wall just isn t practical. Namely how do you rewire lights and fans on the ceiling of the first floor of a two story home.

I want to replace the wall with a flush beam. Professional contractors will normally check first to see if a wall is load bearing before they remove it. Go into your basement or crawlspace and look at the alignment of floor joists. It s my understanding that a double 2x12 will carry the load then properly supported in the crawl space below across the 12 span.

Rewiring electrical of a two story home. What this means is that the first story ceiling joists will also serve as the floor joists for the second story. A main drain running through the wall from a second floor bathroom could be very difficult and expensive to reroute.