Load bearing wall??

[Daren Todd]

Here's one similar to ours.

I think we settled on the design And the flat top range Now to get the lights rewired so I can really investigate the rest of the wall. Especially the upper wall on the cathedral ceiling

 

[Daren Todd]

Not much of an update. Went into town the other night and looked at countertops so we could figure out what we wanted to do. Started on the electrical that turned into a bugger, and ended up opening up a couple walls to fix a cobbed up mess left by a mister fix it

Hopefully tomorrow, I'll have the knee wall built, the other walll reframed with the header, and the lights rewired

 

[Daren Todd]

Header is in, electrical is set. Got some drywall to hang. Then tape and mud.

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[RCW]

Looking good!!!

Progress - - -Woo hoo!!

 

[Daren Todd]

Looking good!!!



Progress - - -Woo hoo!!

Yup, it's drywalled. gotta pull the living room ceiling fan and dining room light. Put in temp fixtures. Finish scraping ceilings. Then tape and mud counter tops will be here around next weekend. So we gotta get painting done this week.



Went with formica with the nice edges for the counter tops. Will look like white marble. Would have loved to go with quartz, but it would have been at least $4500 for countertops. It was $670 for the formica. Original quote was for $800. But caught the sales associates on lunch break, so I had the manager take my order It's nice when you get the commission taken out of the sale

 

[ironpony]

Yup, it's drywalled. gotta pull the living room ceiling fan and dining room light. Put in temp fixtures. Finish scraping ceilings. Then tape and mud counter tops will be here around next weekend. So we gotta get painting done this week.



Went with formica with the nice edges for the counter tops. Will look like white marble. Would have loved to go with quartz, but it would have been at least $4500 for countertops. It was $670 for the formica. Original quote was for $800. But caught the sales associates on lunch break, so I had the manager take my order It's nice when you get the commission taken out of the sale

looks good

 

[Daren Todd]

Thanks guys. It's been slow going. Pulled the decorative beam apart in the living room. Kept thinking something looked odd with it.

Once I got the trim boards off, I realized it was about to fall the left side had dropped two inches over the years.

Used some 4" lag bolts and screwed it into the trusses.

Then built it back up using some 3" deck screws. Ought to stay put this time around.

Just gotta rip down some plywood to build the sides out.

Put in the boxes and drops for pendant lights over the bar. Framed up where the soffit was. That's gonna be made to look like a beam as well

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[ironpony]

still looking good, thinking out loud here. You might want to try your lighting before drywall. I think you will need to add a third pendant in the center. At that span I think you will have a dark spot in the middle. You will not have much light spread at that height above the bar. Again making some assumptions as to the type of fixture.

 

[ironpony]

Also will be heading to Arkansas shortly, have family in Little Rock, Batesville and Fayetteville?

 

[Daren Todd]

still looking good, thinking out loud here. You might want to try your lighting before drywall. I think you will need to add a third pendant in the center. At that span I think you will have a dark spot in the middle. You will not have much light spread at that height above the bar. Again making some assumptions as to the type of fixture.

There's gonna be a pot rack in the center over the stove to address storage issues since the upper row of cabinets were removed. Because of the tight space, it will be a little busy in that spot. The kitchen is small, and comes in at 8x10.

Give me a shout before you head to Arkansas. Wife and I always enjoy meeting members of the forum

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Daren,

Been following along. We did a little "restructuring" during our renovation and I had to laugh...

There is a 14" by 14" beam that runs 18 feet across the center of my living room. I was thinking of pulling out the rough-hewn vertical support posts underneath it for aesthetic reasons. A contractor I had on the project early on looked at the center post and said, "Oh yeah... that is just for looks. You could pull that out no problem." Later, another contractor pulled out his smart phone and ran the numbers on an engineering app he had and told me that removing that beam would nearly double the load on the large cross beam. The center post was deemed a "Jesus post." It "held up the house."

By cutting into the wall at each end, we confirmed six vertical 2x6 studs tied together supporting the ends of the beam inside the walls so removing the outer vertical posts was a no-brainer. The center post would have to be replaced with a framed replacement.

The day the framers were here, I got two 6-ton rolling floor jacks to help take up some of the load under the beam while we cut out the rough post and replaced it. We jacked both jacks to bypass and they cut the post out with a Sawzall. While they were fabricating the new post, I headed off to another project when I heard the skittering sound of jack wheels across concrete... and the sound of temporary studs falling on the slab. I ran back to the living room and all the framers were standing there, backed against the wall, staring at the void where the two temporary supports used to be...

They quickly framed up a replacement and got it into position and then removed the posts at the edges. Amazingly, except for a tiny hairline crack in the drywall joint along the edge of the beam, there was no lasting damage.

PHEW!

Ray

 

[Daren Todd]

Ray, I bet that was a major heart stopper for them boys working on your house

We have a pretty nasty crack in the transition wall above the kitchen just to the right of the smoke detector. But I figured out the cause when I opened up the wall. The 2x4's on the end of that wall weren't tied together.

We had someone come out and take a look before we removed anything in the wall just to cover our butts. When he was looking at it, there were a couple WTF's muttered

The big one, was that the two 2x4's weren't tied together on the end of the wall. So the whole support above it was on that one 2x4. The inside one was bowed in pretty good. They had also notched the top 2x4 in the wall for the soffit just before the transition wall. So only one of the 2x4's in the top of the wall was structural. And by cutting the one, it lost it's structural integrity where it tied the wall to the trusses just before the transition wall.

So when we put the beam in, we followed the contractors advise. We jacked that transition wall back up about 1" to take out the bow in the center got it back square, and then crammed a beam in there. So now instead of just two 2x4's supporting the transition wall, there are 4. The 5 ton jack from the shop made quick work of the jacking

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Daren,

Sounds like you got it resolved. Good.

We had a wall my wife wanted to put a passage through. I opened up the wall and discovered that the wall had a header already in place for the passage but the original owners closed it off for some reason.

Some things just makes ya scratch your head and go "Hmmmm?"

Ray

 

[RCW]

Daren -

If it makes you feel any better, sometime back a previous owner had opened up our kitchen doorway to maybe 5 or 6 feet.

We wanted to open it up to 12 feet, which is the flitch plate that is there now for a header. Double 2x8's with 1/2" steel in the middle.

When it was torn apart, the header was a SINGLE 2x4 on its side!! Had sagged 2" or 3" in the span. Wonder nothing ever busted in March of 1993, when we had a blizzard of 40" of snow!!

Had to jack and brace everything right from the cellar up to get it trued up.

Good luck, you're getting there!

 

[D2Cat]

Daren, you're working too hard. Looks like it's coming along, but I bet next time you just buy the junk tractor!!!

 

[Lil Foot]

All of this brings back memories of when we built our place in the mountains, and had to deal with Coconino county building inspections. (arguably the worst county in the nation to build anything, especially if you're an owner/builder)
When we called for the rough framing inspection, the inspector took a very cursory walk through, and then spent over 30 minutes crawling on his hands & knees with a 1/4" dowel on our front redwood porch deck. He rejected our framing, because he found two places on the deck where he could get his 1/4" dowel in between boards. When questioned, he said someone with stiletto heels might get caught & break an ankle. My framer was able to talk him into coming back later after another inspection in the area. After he left, the crew was laughing their butts off, because he was so worried about stiletto heels, he missed the fact we had forgotten a 6"x 6" post, leaving the end of a 7" x 14" rough-sawn load bearing beam unsupported at one end. We fixed the post & board gaps & he bought the framing, but we had similar trouble with virtually every inspection throughout the whole build.

 

[Daren Todd]

Daren, you're working too hard. Looks like it's coming along, but I bet next time you just buy the junk tractor!!!

Absolutely buy cheap and sell high Save the profit each time. Then HIRE SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT I'm so sick of eating and drinking dust!!!!

Got all the ceilings scraped and sanded. Got some touch up spots, and about half the spackling is done. We should be painting by this weekend. After a thorough cleaning to get rid of all the bloody dust!!!!

 

[Daren Todd]

Still mudding. Should be on to painting tomorrow or Saturday.

Gotta roll the ceilings with some watered down spackle to hide imperfections. Gonna do the same with the walls.

Counter tops came in today. Couldn't pick them up though. Mother Nature rained on us. So hopefully will be able to get the tomorrow.

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[RCW]

Look good - you're getting there....

 

[Daren Todd]

Rain held off long enough to get the counter tops home rain started in about 10 minutes after we got them inside

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