Hi
I have recently bought a 2 bedroomed flat, which I believe when first built (in the mid 60's) was a council flat. All of the internal door frames are made of metal and from what I can tell are hollow.
In the bedroom, there is one such door frame which leads to a small cupboard where the central heating boiler is situated. This cupboard is also accessible from a door in the living room. Before purchasing the flat, I insisted that the central heating boiler was given a safety check, and one of the items on which it failed was that it could be accessed from two sides (not sure why this should be bad, but apparently it is). In order to get a safety certificate issued, the occupier had to block off one of the entraces to the cupboard, and all he did was remove the door from the frame in the bedroom and block the entrance off by inserting a piece of hardboard and sealing it in with bathroom sealant.
I now want to redecorate the bedroom and remove the door frame and fill the gap in.
I am at a bit of a loss as to how to do this, because I cannot work out how the door frame is held in place. I believe that wooden door frames are normally nailed in, however this is a metal door frame and there are no obvious nails or screws anywhere. What it looks like, and I am not suggesting that this is how it is actually held in, is that the door frame was put in place and the wall then built around it!
I have determined that the metal is about 2-3mm thick - I am thinking that maybe one way of getting the frame out might be to saw through the metal and make sections about 12" long and then using a hammer to knock out these sections.
Does anybody have any other suggestions? Is my idea a mad one? Also, how can I be sure that the bricks above the door frame are not relying on the door frame itself to stay in place?
Any advice would be very gratefully received!
Thanks
Jon.
I have recently bought a 2 bedroomed flat, which I believe when first built (in the mid 60's) was a council flat. All of the internal door frames are made of metal and from what I can tell are hollow.
In the bedroom, there is one such door frame which leads to a small cupboard where the central heating boiler is situated. This cupboard is also accessible from a door in the living room. Before purchasing the flat, I insisted that the central heating boiler was given a safety check, and one of the items on which it failed was that it could be accessed from two sides (not sure why this should be bad, but apparently it is). In order to get a safety certificate issued, the occupier had to block off one of the entraces to the cupboard, and all he did was remove the door from the frame in the bedroom and block the entrance off by inserting a piece of hardboard and sealing it in with bathroom sealant.
I now want to redecorate the bedroom and remove the door frame and fill the gap in.
I am at a bit of a loss as to how to do this, because I cannot work out how the door frame is held in place. I believe that wooden door frames are normally nailed in, however this is a metal door frame and there are no obvious nails or screws anywhere. What it looks like, and I am not suggesting that this is how it is actually held in, is that the door frame was put in place and the wall then built around it!
I have determined that the metal is about 2-3mm thick - I am thinking that maybe one way of getting the frame out might be to saw through the metal and make sections about 12" long and then using a hammer to knock out these sections.
Does anybody have any other suggestions? Is my idea a mad one? Also, how can I be sure that the bricks above the door frame are not relying on the door frame itself to stay in place?
Any advice would be very gratefully received!
Thanks
Jon.
