Modifying a Load Bearing Wall
Hey guys, I plan on opening up some doors in a load bearing wall for a closet soon. I just wanted to go over my plan to make sure it looks good.
The first picture is a side view and top of the partition walls. This is where two bedrooms back into eachother with closets in between. I plan on closing in the closet door in one room, and removing the center divider to make on big closet. Then put two sets of bifold doors in. The red circled areas are where the wall will be opened up.
This is a single story FL house with attic space. There is nothing in the attic but a 40g water heater, which sits on top of the closets straddling the two walls, it's to the right of the center of the existing door in the wall I'm going to open up. As you can see the load from the ceiling is split between these two walls. Ceiling joists run from the external walls to these walls, then there is a short connector joists that runs between them. House is 28' wide, this closet sits in the center. The bearing walls sit about 18" off of a masonry foundation wall that runs the length of the house. That part seemed kind of odd to me since the load walls aren't directly over the foundation wall, but it's worked fine since 1938 so whatever.
The second picture shows my plan for the new wall. 2X 2x10 sandwiched plywood headers, glued and screwed. I currently plan for a single jack stud, would this warrant two? I'm also concerned with the now concentrated load on the subfloor. Should I do something between the floor joists under the sole plate to help spread the load? The 3 sole plats will be ~11" long so they will ony be over one joist each. I was thinking I could use a joist hanger and run something under the sole plates.
Do you guys see any other major issues with this?
Thanks!
Last edited by acme54321; 08-21-2010 at 12:38 AM.
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