Can I remove these bricks?

[Hpd]

I'm renovating an old terraced house and removed a door frame about 1.5m in from the front door (it was kind of a porch area with original tiled floor) to open up the hallway. I expected to see a timber lintel above the frame but it turns out its about 3 courses of bricks instead (which are loose).

I had an engineer friend lift some floorboards above and he's quite sure he joists are supported by the front wall and a big timber lintel further into the hallway, and that the bricks were simply used as in-fill above the frame and can easily be removed.

Anyone had similar experience? I'll try and get a photo if is difficult to picture

 

[dann09]

Perhaps the bricks were merely sitting on the head of the door frame. Perhaps the joists cantilever out. You dont know. Maybe scan a sketch with your pics.

Sorry to be blunt, but dont do anything else until you are certain that you know what you are doing.

Is the house occupied?

What kind of engineer gave a view?

 

[big-all]

if nothing is touching the bricks at any point he may be right
i assume the joists travel to the front wall without touching the doorway

 

[Hpd]

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff226/qu1ksilver/5D355E6C-14E1-455F-9959-10AFD6AAC344-2028-0000011D260ED825.jpg[/IMG

The joists run from the main front wall and rest on the lintel close to where I'm standing when taking this picture. It's not clear but the bricks seems to float about 25mm above the frame.

When lifting floorboards above the bricks you can see then poking up through the lath & plaster but seem to be doing nothing. Not sure yet if they tie into the walls rather side of this frame but at a glance I don't think so

 

[Hpd]

 

[dann09]

1. Is the PVC front door in a porch, or is that the the main front wall with the joists resting on it?

2. Or do the joists rest above the frame that you want to remove?

 

[Hpd]

The PVC door is in the main front wall, there's no porch. The frame you see there is 4x2" and had a single glazed door in it. Incidentally a window fitter who came to the house today commented saying the gap between the bricks was because the frame that's there isn't the original one, and that the bricks were 'definitely' nothing more than in-fill.

I'm 99% confident now but for me that's not enough to begin removing the bricks. Seems silly I know!

 

[dann09]

I would say, give it a go, it definitely appears to be filler. If nothing above but boards then nothing to come crashing down. Any tied-in bricks can be snapped off with a brick or cold chisel - gentle taps.

You might take account of the elec. trunking(?) running up the (L) hand wall, cable - old and new might be exposed.

And how are you going to deal with the lovely cove plastering, which, presumably, is on both sides of the brickwork? Hopefully you can keep it and work it into some kind of decorative detail.

 

[Hpd]

The coving is only in this part of the house and isn't original so I'm happy to remove it, will then over-board the area in 9mm plasterboard and skim it, the Trunking is actually hiding 8mm microbore pipe work, house currently has no rads/boiler and is undergoing a full re-wire, should be safe to proceed in that respect!

 

[Hpd]

I'll keep the mouldings beneath timber lintel (top of photo)

 

[Hpd]

All removed and it was just infill, job done!