Another stud wall removal to make kitchen-diner

[superstardeejay]

I'm hoping to follow the trend and make a kitchen diner by removing a stud wall between the small rear kitchen and small rear dining room to make one long room across the entire back of the house. The house is a 70's square detached box with all upstairs rooms divided by stud walls. The loft is trusses running side to side. Downstairs the floor joists run front to back and rest on 2 parallel brick walls running side to side across the middle of the house with a central side to side passageway.

The stud wall I want to remove divides the back left and right rooms and spans the back brick wall up to the intermediate internal brick wall. The stud wall has an identical stud wall directly above it upstairs. The span of the wall to be removed is 2.6m.

Is there any reason I can't do it?

 

[regsmyth]

If there is a wall directly above the one you want to remove, you might find you require a supporting (steel) beam in it's place.
Do you know if the upstairs wall is helping support the roof at all?
Your description is quite hard to follow. A quick sketch/photo would help and might get you a better answer.

 

[superstardeejay]

Here's a plan view of the ground floor. I've omitted the doorways.
The stud wall between kitchen and dining room is the one I want to go.
All the internal brick walls extend to first floor only, above the first floor is all stud wall. I thought roof trusses were self supporting? My water tank is across trusses over the landing. The bath is over the hallway in the corner of 2 brick walls below.

Untitled

• superstardeejay
• 12 Dec 2012
• 1

 

[regsmyth]

It looks like it would be ok to remove it, but don't take my word for it. It could still be helping to support the weight of the upstairs wall.

 

[superstardeejay]

Well..I've just measured the position of the upstairs stud wall that is above the downstairs one. It's 12 inches across! So the upstairs one doesn't lie directly over the downstairs one.

 

[Dave-K]

If it is spanning parallel to joists and is not directly below the higher level stud wall it is unlikely to be load-bearing and can probably be removed. What is the full span of the trusses?

Before you remove it though make sure the upper level stud wall is properly supported off dwangs/noggins and these are not supported on the lower stud wall.

The safest bet is to strip some of the ceiling/upper level floor to inspect it properly.

 

[superstardeejay]

make sure the upper level stud wall is properly supported off dwangs

Not sure what a dwang is!!

The bedrooms upstairs have just had new fitted carpets so not sure I want to rip them up. However the floorboards upstairs go under the wall from one room to the other so I assume the wall sits on the floor.

 

[Alastairreid]

Not sure what a dwang is!!

Translates to Noggin