Removing Load Bearing Walls

Wallectomy: The Surgical Removal of Load Bearing Walls

I moved into my crappy house in July of 2011. By January of 2012 I had made little progress on the east wing due to the fact that removing load bearing walls is neither easy nor free. Who knew? (Only just everyone.) Performing a wallectomy isn’t like removing any old wall. You do it wrong and your house basically falls down. It dies. No one wants a dead house, so I had to leave it to the professionals. Luckily, my cousin (Tommy) is one of those, and he likes me, so he eventually made some time to help me out. On the last day of January, I got the call. His exact words? “I’m coming tomorrow. Get the f*ck out.” So Egor and I did.

Wall between living room and kitchen

The plan was to remove the wall between the living room and kitchen entirely, and to move one wall (shown in the picture below) a few feet into the garage to incorporate the basement stairs in with the rest of the house. If this sounds confusing, you might want to check out this post to see the floor plan so you get a clearer sense of the space and my vision.

Wall between garage and the dining room with basement steps

This is how my house looked right before the procedure. (I had removed the sheetrock before moving in, so the house looked this way for about six months.)

View of kitchen from living room

View from hallway into living room

Standing in kitchen looking at wall to be removed

Standing in dining room looking at wall to be removed

Standing in dining room looking into kitchen

View of garage wall to be removed

I could try to describe the procedure to you, but really, I don’t know jack about wallectomies. I’d just be making sh*t up to impress you. (Kinda like I made up the word wallectomy.) So, if you landed on this page thinking you might get some expert advice, you should probably (read my whole blog and then like me on Facebook and then subscribe to my posts and then) keep on Googling. However… if you’re a visual learner, I do have a whole lot of photos of the process, so maybe this post won’t be so useless to you after all. You might as well keep scrolling. You’re already here…

The first wall to go was the one between the living room and kitchen.

Temporary walls to remove load bearing wall

Temporary walls where load bearing wall will be removed

Temporary walls where load bearing wall will be removed

Temporary walls where load bearing wall will be removed

As I said, I’m no expert, but it looks like Tommy built temporary walls to hold up the house so he could remove the load bearing wall, but what do I know? (No, that’s really what he did. I do know.) Where the wall used to be, he put in a beam made from Microlam to take over the job of supporting the house. I’m told it’s as strong as steel. I really hope that’s true. Houses are stupid heavy.

Load bearing wall removed with microlam beam in place

Load bearing wall removed with microlam beam in place

Load bearing wall removed with microlam beam in place

Load bearing wall removed with microlam beam in place

On day two, he removed the garage wall and a small section of wall in the living room, in order to expose the basement steps. A new wall went up further into the garage. I lost a bunch of garage real estate with this decision, but I never park my car in there anyway. (Again, that floor plan is here if you’re confused.)

Removing load bearing walls

Removing load bearing walls

Removing load bearing walls

Removing load bearing walls

Removing load bearing walls

Here’s the result… I love how open it looks now!

Living room after load bearing wall removal

Looking into kitchen after load bearing wall removal

Standing in hallway looking at where load bearing wall was removed

Looking into dining room where wall was moved

Standing in kitchen looking at where wall was moved into garage

Garage wall cut down to make a stair rail and a new wall built in the garage

Standing in dining room looking at living room where load bearing wall was removed

Looking from dining room into living room where load bearing wall was removed

Standing by basement steps looking through where wall was removed into kitchen

Living room and kitchen after removal of load bearing walls

Tommy rocks. Two days. Two walls. Gone! It’s taken me two days just to write this post. Some people are just more productive than others… Thanks for wasting time here with me. Please Like! Share! Subscribe below!

Subscribe and I'll love you forever.

Every time you share, an angel gets their wings.

6 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *