Given everyone was off on New Years Day, Jamie and I decided to continue to be productive so in the morning we took a dip in the hot tub, had some lunch, and then proceeded to remove the old 70’s paneling that adorns most of the walls in the basement.

One of our goals was to knock down the wall between the family room and one of the bedrooms to make a larger living space area but I wasn’t sure whether I’d have to hire an engineer to help us design a beam to support the load.  Much to my pleasant surprise, I learned that the “make-shift” bedroom was not a load bearing wall and the original floorplan called for 2 2×10 headers with a beam between them that rests on top of the foundation wall.  I saw the beam after removing the paneling and then tested by removing the closet, then removing some studs and the entire wall was free standing!  See demo pics below:

Wood paneling and spare bedroom.  See removed panel exposed beam the covers the span.

We demoed the closet that was in the bedroom, and then I got the fun job of punching and kicking out the particle board.  Jamie got in on the “fun” to and man-handled the remaining sheet into submission.

Dust still settling as I knocked out the remaining studs for the wall.  The two rooms are now opened up.

As soon as I decide where to re-rout the electrical switch, I’ll knock out those remaining two studs on the right.  Now we just have to find a place to haul all the scrap material - I’ll be re-using some of the studs to build an in-wall entertainment unit at the far end.  I’m also installing the electrical components into the wall to the right so there will be access from under the stairs for wiring, etc.  Enjoy!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Knowledge, My Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. This post has been viewed 423 times.