How much of a load-bearing wall can be removed?

October 26, 2020 5:30 PM

There is a load-bearing wall between a kitchen and a living room. I am interested in removing all of it except 2' on each end. The wall is just over 14' in total, so I am looking to remove the middle 10-10.5' feet of it. My question is: (i) Is 10.5' too large a span to remove, (ii) If not, approximately how tall a header will be needed to support this? (I won't act on any ballparks provided - just trying at this stage to imagine the visual result of such a project). Approx. cost?
posted by ClaireBear to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

This is 100% a question for an engineer who can review the plans and the space. There is so much going on with buildings that nobody can even guess without seeing the details.
posted by bilabial at 5:38 PM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but just wanted to confirm that I definitely will get a structural engineer on board! I was just hoping to get initial spitballing about feasibility and visual outcome, with the understanding that it would be totally rough.
posted by ClaireBear at 5:41 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Assuming a regular house of not more than two stories this is doable. You'll need some qualified (engineer, archectech , qualified GC) to give any sort of reasonable specific answer though. It is not just about the beam but also the posts at each end and the foundational supports for same.
posted by Mitheral at 5:46 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Spitballing, a wood header might be a pair of 2x10s. A steel header could be significantly smaller. You might also need to do some work in the basement/under the floor.
posted by jon1270 at 5:47 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I did this myself (with the help of a few friends) in my own house; Nthing the part about hiring a structural engineer. I took out the 15 feet run of the load-bearing wall between my kitchen and dining room, replacing it with a glulam beam that was 12" deep. I put a king post against the abutting wall on one side (and had to repour a basement footing to support it) and had another beam for a french door on the other side. The drawings from the engineer specified exactly what needed to happen, but I'd also had several years of carpentry experience. Visually it's a nice clean run of douglas fir glulam beam with a bit of molding on the butt ends to hide transitions and a bracket. The fee for the engineer was for sure the best money I spent on the project.
posted by lhputtgrass at 6:40 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Load-bearing but bearing what? A second floor, a second floor and roof, or just an attic?

You could expect to use a beam that is no more than 12 inches from the ceiling. Think of the header above a typical doorway but 10 feet wide.

And then consider that you are transferring all of the weight from the span to the two ends. So you might have to go beneath the floor and see if you need extra support on those two ends below the floor.

All of this is certainly doable and nothing particularly unusual for construction.
posted by JackFlash at 7:53 PM on October 26, 2020

In the UK with a brick built house this would be one of the most common structural changes to make. 10ft span is straightforward and here you’d have a steel beam, guessing from visuals I’ve seen probably between 8 and 12 inches finished height from ceiling.
posted by plonkee at 2:03 AM on October 27, 2020

In my house, a load-bearing wall was replaced by a glulam beam in the attic spanning about 12'. So no visual impact, other than the absence of a wall.
posted by adamrice at 7:06 AM on October 27, 2020

A 22' beam in my house was replaced. It's about 2Ft thick made of LVL.

LVL beams can be approximately 100ft long (i've actually seen longer in a stick framed grocery store in LA, CA).

A structural engineer will size the beam and provide drawings for the construction guys and city to approve it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:34 AM on October 27, 2020

I saw a situation like this on some TV show, and they used a steel header because, in their particular geometry, they didn't have room for a deep header. They commented on how expensive itvwas.
posted by SemiSalt at 10:39 AM on October 27, 2020

You need an engineer, but to get a ballpark, you could use a calculator like this one.
posted by agentofselection at 11:51 AM on October 27, 2020

We just did almost exactly what you're describing on the first floor of our two-story house (typical modern American construction). Pretty much follows what JackFlash describes above. We needed a structural engineer (in fact required in order to get permits). We had a choice to go with a wooden beam or a steel beam, where the wooden one would protrude below the ceiling due to its height while the steel one would fit entirely within the ceiling but was more expensive (we went with steel because the protrusion interfered with other things that were going in). This was on the first floor of a two-story house, and we did need to go through the floor to add a support on one end. This was part of a much larger project, but I believe this part probably ran us a few thousand dollars all told (in a pretty expensive area). Everything is going to depend on the particular details of your construction, we actually had to take out sections of drywall in order to get a look in the walls and figure out what all we needed to do.
posted by madmethods at 12:10 PM on October 27, 2020