THe master bedroom in my 1927 house is small and I realized that there is another 3′ of space in a small closet behind the bed that runs the length of the room. Currently there is a 2×4 wall separating the closet from the bedroom. Can I simply take down that wall and put up another further into the eaves, thereby giving me more floorspace (while obviously lowering the ceiling the more I go into the closet space. Hope this makes sense. I just want to make sure that this wall isn’t supporting the roof in a way that I could endanger the house by removing it. Would it be better to build the new wall in place inside the closet and then take down the old wall? Thanks.
Edited 8/6/2007 10:36 am ET by MichaelNYC
Replies
This is the sort of thing that's impossible to say much about without seeing the framing. It's could be that the rafters are sufficient and there is no structural need for the "knee wall" at all, or it could be that the rafters are a bit undersized and the knee wall is needed to keep the roof from bowing. On a house of that vintage it's even possible that the knee walls are helping to support the floor.
DanH is right --- no one can really say whether you can do this without seeing the existing framing. Can you post some pictures or sketches?
You have barely begun to descriube the existing framing scnario.
it is easy for people to do this assuming that we can see as much as you can, but there are probably 40-50 variables that you leave up in the air for us to guess at, making any reply worthless at this point, but if I make all the right assumptions, the answer woud be, "Probably"
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