But of course before planning anything which would require cutting studs and reframing - we needed to know the answer to the all-important home improvement question: "Hey, is that wall load-bearing?"
Dave took the plunge and squeezed himself into our tiny little hole in the sheetrock to have a look around. (I'm glad at least one of us is not claustrophobic.)
The answer was a resounding "Yes, that wall is indeed load-bearing." It's so easy to get turned around when you're trying to simply imagine the structure of your house with only the visible interior walls to give you clues. I would guess that lots of folks get into trouble with this one. We weren't at all thinking about the fact that although the wall appears to be interior -- it is technically an exterior wall -- nestled back quite a few feet behind the visible slope of the roof -- but still quite exterior... and most definitely involved with the support of the roof itself.... How I'm not sure - Dave's the engineer in the family.
"Oh no! A load-bearing wall! Whatever will we do?"We're not interested in reframing to redistribute the load and tempting Murphy and his law anymore than he needs to be tempted....
So William's bedroom project is being scaled back even more to paint, baseboards, flooring, and fixtures. We took our first wobbly steps toward that end Saturday afternoon.
In my experience, the first visible sign of a home improvement project in progress is when the area being improved looks 100 times worse than it did before you started.
William was only six years old when he moved into this room just over four years ago.... And, in case you were wondering, little boys are hard on drywall. The walls are littered with holes and scrapes and gouges -- meaning lots of extra wall prep. Plus - the chair rail we removed was apparently heavily caulked to the walls and didn't come down quite as clean as we would have liked -- meaning more extra wall prep.
When the walls are ready (which may be a few more days) we'll move straight into priming... After which I'll get to pick out paint yet again. William wants camouflage-painted walls. I do not.
Therefore, we're going to try a compromise by doing a subtle faux texture using something like jungle camo colors on the walls. Maybe.
Updates to come as we make progress. :)
So William's bedroom project is being scaled back even more to paint, baseboards, flooring, and fixtures. We took our first wobbly steps toward that end Saturday afternoon.
In my experience, the first visible sign of a home improvement project in progress is when the area being improved looks 100 times worse than it did before you started.William was only six years old when he moved into this room just over four years ago.... And, in case you were wondering, little boys are hard on drywall. The walls are littered with holes and scrapes and gouges -- meaning lots of extra wall prep. Plus - the chair rail we removed was apparently heavily caulked to the walls and didn't come down quite as clean as we would have liked -- meaning more extra wall prep.
When the walls are ready (which may be a few more days) we'll move straight into priming... After which I'll get to pick out paint yet again. William wants camouflage-painted walls. I do not.
Therefore, we're going to try a compromise by doing a subtle faux texture using something like jungle camo colors on the walls. Maybe.
Updates to come as we make progress. :)
4 comments:
Oh, too bad. I really like rooms with slanted walls.
signed,
Sitting in the midst of a soon to be ripped up carpet, furniture everywhere :-)
Well, at least you checked it out. So many don't. I like the little nook (gable?) where the window is.
LOL trudy.. I don't know how I feel for you... I either feel sorry for you or I envy you! Maybe both! ;)
Depending on the type of building and the number of stories, load-bearing walls are gauged to the appropriate thickness to carry the weight above it. Without doing so, it is possible that an outer wall could become unstable if the load exceeds the strength of the material used, potentially leading to the collapse of the structure.
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