Advice on raising a door lintel please

[TeaAndBiscuits]

Hi all,

I have an upstairs doorway into an extension with a door that is too short. I think it was originally a window in what was an external wall but when they turned it into a doorway they left the lintel alone and cut a couple of inches off the bottom of the door instead.

I'm just starting refurbing my upstairs bathroom which involves a lot of disruption in the area and this has always irritated me so I want to fix it at the same time.

I began stripping the wall back to see what I'm dealing with:

It's a single leaf of block (outer leaf was removed when building the extension I guess) with a 100 x 50 wallplate on the top. Concrete lintel 100 x 165. That stud wall is coming out and getting moved slightly to rejig the bathroom size/shape a bit hence wanting to do this now.

Basically I just need a couple of inches more under the lintel for a standard height door.

So what's my best option here?

1 - Cut this 165-ish deep concrete lintel and replace with a (e.g.) 100 x 100 lintel, pushed right up into the original slot and packed underneath.

2 - Cut this lintel out, then remove a couple of inches from the bottom of the blocks above (the lintel already appears to be inset into them by an inch or so) and re set the lintel higher.

3 - Remove the blocks above entirely and put the lintel directly under the wallplate.


For extra context:

The wallplate supports ceiling joists and, in theory, rafters. However where the roof has been modified for the extension, the rafters over the doorway (the 2 nearest the camera) don't really have anything on them any more.

Thanks all!

 

[23vc]

If that section of wall plate isn’t bearing any significant weight, you can take it all out and stud down to the desired door head height
Or replace the existing lintel with a 65mm one at whatever height if the masonry above it stays in place when you take it out
The existing lintel will be very heavy, probably have rebar in it and won’t be easy to get out. If you can provide some safe cushioning on the floor you can push it out. Or spend a while breaking it up but the rebar won’t make that easy

 

[TeaAndBiscuits]

If that section of wall plate isn’t bearing any significant weight, you can take it all out and stud down to the desired door head height
Or replace the existing lintel with a 65mm one at whatever height if the masonry above it stays in place when you take it out
The existing lintel will be very heavy, probably have rebar in it and won’t be easy to get out. If you can provide some safe cushioning on the floor you can push it out. Or spend a while breaking it up but the rebar won’t make that easy

Thanks for that, if I can replace with a 65mm lintel at the top of the space the existing lintel sits in then that would solve the problem and I think that would overall be the easiest option.

A 65mm lintel is only 40% of the size of the existing one though so being a nervous sort I do need to figure out if that section of wall/lintel is bearing any 'significant weight'...

 

[23vc]

Very much doubt it as the wall plate spreads the load anyway and you said there wasn’t much in the way of rafters sitting on that section of it