We are considering removing two walls in our home in conjunction with a kitchen renovation. The first question that comes up is whether these walls could be load-bearing, so I would like to have your opinions on this.
I have attached a floor plan and here is an explanation of the contents:
The walls we want to remove are marked with purple lines and numbers 1 and 2 between the maid's room and the kitchen, and between the maid's room and the serving room.
The pink line that runs transversely across the house consists of a very thick timber beam in the lower dashed part and a solid wall in the upper part.
The orange marked lines running lengthwise in the house correspond to a very thick timber floor joist between the ground floor and the upper floor. So the ceiling above the walls we want to remove. It looks this way all the way.
The closet and cabinet along wall 2 are no longer there, but the door marked C1 is still there.
The door marked B1 is no longer there; it is currently our sink wall.
Ignore the red sections, they're from an old central heating system and are hand-drawn on the original house plans, which I have scanned in.
I don't think these walls are load-bearing, but I'm not sure. Wall 1 looks thicker on the plan than wall 2, but wall 1 runs parallel with the beams above, so it doesn't seem like it should be load-bearing. Wall 2 runs perpendicular to the floor joists above but looks thin on the plan, and I believe the pink massive beam is what supports the orange floor joists. The span is about 5 meters. A similar area on the other side of the house is the completely open "living room" which has no interior walls but the same dimensions.
Additionally, the house was built in 1911, the exterior walls are horizontal logs, all interior walls are solid wood, I believe it is vertical planks but it looked very roughly hewn when we renovated the dining room, so I'm not sure if it could possibly be thicker in some places.
It seems that the beams in the intermediate floor are oriented in the length direction of the house, supported by the walls that are parallel to the pink-marked one. Near the walls you want to remove, there is a chimney, which complicates things. I would like to know the span (should be about 5 m) and the approximate dimensions of the orange-colored beams. Since the house is so old and the exterior walls are made of horizontal timber, one should be quite careful before making such a decision.
I was also considering that at least wall 1 should be load-bearing, since it connects with the chimney and also runs in the length direction of the house, or what do you think @justusandersson ?
Yes, I feel quite confident that wall 1 is load-bearing. As for wall 2, it probably wasn't load-bearing when the house was built, but it may have effectively become one later. I would prefer to have the information I initially requested before saying anything certain. The problem with houses this old is that they can be quite unsystematically constructed.
The beams marked in orange along the length of the house have dimensions of 160x220mm and are spaced at 600mm centers (+-10mm). The span between the outer wall and the pink-marked wall is just under 5m. Since the beams extend on the short side as a bit of ornamentation, it was easy to measure.
I am attaching a picture from the attic. The vertical support beams visible are not above wall 1, the chimney is what you see to the left.
Yes, with those dimensions, the "orange-colored" beams handle the current span very well. A maximum deflection of 1/600 of the span and acceptable flex behavior. This means that wall 2 can certainly be taken down. Regarding wall 1, it's necessary to further investigate how the beams around the chimney are arranged. In a modern house, the beams would have been offset when the chimney is thicker than the distance between the beams. You can't assume this in your case. Is it just the ground floor plus attic? If so, it might not be so difficult to investigate.
No, it's an upper floor and wall 1 exists on floor 2 as well. I suspect that wall 1 supports the entire beam from the chimney and out. I hope it will be possible to put a post by the chimney instead.
I'll have to tear out some surfaces in the "jungfrukammaren" and take a look.
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