Hi folks,
I live in an 1870s property, which has an original-construction loft room. The walls of the room come quite far in from the eaves, so I'd like to knock a small entrance in one of the walls, to create access to the eaves for storage.
The wall studs are fixed at 30cm centres though, so I'd need to remove one of the studs to get a decent sized opening, and am wondering about whether this is structurally ok. I've attached some sketches to show construction of the roof and room, but basically:
In terms of actually doing the work...I was planning on bracing the middle stud before I cut it, by temporarily screwing a couple of 2x4 across the three studs (see third pic). And then cutting the middle one, before fixing a header on top of jacks. Does that sound sensible?
I live in an 1870s property, which has an original-construction loft room. The walls of the room come quite far in from the eaves, so I'd like to knock a small entrance in one of the walls, to create access to the eaves for storage.
The wall studs are fixed at 30cm centres though, so I'd need to remove one of the studs to get a decent sized opening, and am wondering about whether this is structurally ok. I've attached some sketches to show construction of the roof and room, but basically:
- Each side of the roof is supported by two chunky (10cm x 12cm) purlins, that run the full 5m width of the house, into the brick gable walls. They're about 2m apart, along the roof rafters. There aren't any struts or anything else supporting the purlins along the 5m span.
- The stud walls are set approximately halfway between these purlins. There's no supporting wall underneath them (as they fall in the middle of the ceiling of the room below. But I've no way of knowing whether there's another chunky beam running the width of the house inside this ceiling, that takes any load.
- I'm assuming it would be ok to remove one of these studs, as the stud walls don't run continuously across the width of the house. On one side, the wall runs about 2/3 of the way across, before stopping to accommodate the stairs. On the other side, there is a small dormer in the middle of the stud wall. In the sections of the roof where there's no stud wall, there doesn't appear to be anything else supporting the rafters over that 2m span between the purlins.
In terms of actually doing the work...I was planning on bracing the middle stud before I cut it, by temporarily screwing a couple of 2x4 across the three studs (see third pic). And then cutting the middle one, before fixing a header on top of jacks. Does that sound sensible?
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