Taking out a wall can turn two cramped rooms into an inviting, more useful one. Identify any complications before you start by inspecting the wall.
Dealing with Utilities: First, deter mine what may be inside the wall. The number of outlets and switches suggests how much wiring it contains. A bath room above may be hooked to plumbing that descends through the wall. From the basement you may be able to detect whether heating pipes or ducts rise within the wall.
If all you find is wiring that terminates at outlets in the wall, you can remove the wires when you take out the wall. A heat duct connected to a wall register can be cut back to the floor and capped with a register there. Even if a wall contains many pipes and cables, you may be able to remove most of the partition and leave one end to carry the lines, which can be moved by a plumber or an electrician.
Bearing or Nonbearing Walls: You must also determine a crucial fact — whether the wall bears weight from above, thus serving as a vital structural element of the house. The key clue to a bearing wall is joists crossing its top plates, perpendicular to them. A nonbearing wall usually runs parallel to the joists and perpendicular to the long walls of the house. You can detect joists by looking in the attic and basement or by cutting a small hole in the ceiling, if you find a girder or wall running under and parallel to the partition; you can also be sure it's a bearing wall. if any doubt remains, assume that the wall bears weight.
As shown at right, nonbearing walls can be removed in whole or in part as you prefer. To take out a bearing wall, consult above section. Such a wall must be replaced by framing near the ceiling that will be visible in the finished room.
Finishing the Job: After removing the wall, you will confront breaks in the ceiling, walls, and floor. Wallboard ceilings and walls are easy to patch. The break in the floor can be built up with any wood as thick as the flooring, and the whole room carpeted or tiled. Professional help may be needed for hardwood floors that will remain exposed.
CAUTION: Before starting work, check for lead and asbestos in the wall.
CAUTION: Make sure power is off to all wiring in the wall before beginning work; turn off the power at the service panel, then check with a circuit tester at the wall.
TOOLS:
- Pry bar
- Screwdriver
- Handsaw
- Crowbar
- Hammer
- Wallboard knife
- Circular saw with metal-cutting blade
- Circuit tester
MATERIALS:
- Drop cloths and tape
- Scrap lumber
- Framing lumber (2 x 4s, 2 x 8s, 2 x 10s)
- Nails (2.5”)
- Wallboard
- Joint compound
- Joint tape
- Corner bead
CAUTION! Demolition creates dust, flying splinters, and other potentially dangerous debris. Put on safety goggles, a dust mask, and leather work gloves. Long sleeves, long pants, and sturdy shoes are also in order, and a cap or scarf will keep the mess out of your hair.
Bearing and nonbearing walls.
In a typical frame house, represented at right in a simplified diagram, the roof is supported by long outer, or side, walls parallel to the ridge. The weight of the remaining structure—as well as the house contents—rests on joists, which transfer the load to the side walls. These walls pass the weight to the foundations and on to the footings. (End walls usually do not carry weight.) Since a standard wood joist can't span the usual distance from one side wall to another, house framers provide two joists and rest their inside ends on an interior bearing wall. The interior bearing wall carries the weight down to a solid support, either to a bearing wall that rests on its own footings or, as shown here, to a girder with ends that rest on the foundation.
GETTING RID OF A NON-BEARING WALL
1. Stripping the wall.
• Check for utility lines in the wall as described in the text at left, and deal with them as explained there. Make sure the power is off to outlets in the wall.
• Tear off the wall trim with a pry bar.
• Tape down drop cloths in each room, close any interior doors, and open the windows.
• Cut strips of wall from between the studs with a circular saw set to the thickness of the wall surface; use a metal-cutting blade if the wall is made of plaster on metal lath.
• Saw the studs in two near the middle, and work the halves free from their nailing.
2. Removing outlet wiring.
• When you reach an outlet, remove its cover plate and strip off the wall surface around it.
• If the box is connected to a single cable coming up from a basement directly beneath, disconnect the cable from its receptacle and box. Then tug at it while a helper in the basement watches to identify it by its movement.
• Trace the cable to the nearest electrical box, disconnect it, and pull it out of the wall.
You may need professional help to reroute the wiring if you can't discover a cable’s origin, if the outlet box has more than one cable entering it, or if unrelated cables pass through the wall.
3. The last stud.
• Work the bottom of the end stud loose from the wall with a pry bar, using a wide wood scrap against the adjoining wall as a fulcrum to protect the surface.
• Continue to pry up the stud by making use of a pry bar and wood scrap.
• When the stud is safely away from the wall, wrench it free.
The top plate is often nailed up ward to blocks between adjacent joists. Pry it down, beginning at the nailhead nearest one end, using a wood scrap as a prying surface to protect the ceiling.
Repair the gaps made in the adjoining walls and the ceiling.
If you are planning to cover the floor with resilient tiles, wood parquet, or carpeting, fill in the space where the soleplate rested with a board thick enough to make the surface even.
4. The soleplate.
• Somewhere near the center of the soleplate, make two saw cuts about 2” apart.
• Chisel out the wood between the cuts down to the subfloor.
• Insert a crowbar and pry up one end of the plate. With a scrap of 2-by-4 as a fulcrum, pry up the other end.
LEAVING PART OF THE WALL IN PLACE
1. Securing the top plate.
• Designate a stud where you will stop demolition of the wall to preserve the remainder of it.
• Apply the methods to demolish the unwanted part of the wall, but cut the wall surface and plates so that they extend 1” beyond the stud designated earlier; doing so creates a pocket for the stud to be added in Step 2.
• Cut a hole about 1 foot wide in the ceiling, centered on the upper end of the stud and running to the second joist on either side.
• Nail a block of joist-dimension lumber between the joists on each side of the top plate, with the face of the block flush with the end of the plate.
• Nail through the plate into the edge of the block.
2. Reinforcing the stud.
• Cut a reinforcing stud to fit snugly between the top plate and soleplate, and nail it to the end stud in the section of the partition left standing.
• Surface the outer face of the reinforcing stud with wallboard and finish with corner bead.