Installing A Flush Header Beam
Header Beam Cost
By Larry WaltonPhotos by Mark WaltonIt may look like home improvement skills come naturally for my brothers and me, but it’s mostly due to a lifetime of lessons strung together. Early on we learned from our dad, a professional carpenter and a prolific remodeler of the house we grew up in. But we also learned some remodeling lessons from our mom. One of our earliest memories of a home improvement project was carried out by mom at her friend Betty’s house.
The ladies decided it was time take out a wall between the dining room and the living room to accommodate her friend’s large family. Mom walked down to Betty’s house with dad’s circular saw in hand, and the friends made short work of the wall.When Mom proudly reported on the project at dinner, she heard a thing or two from dad about the dangers of removing potentially load-bearing walls and all of the possible obstructions that could have been hidden inside the wall. Mom just shrugged and said, “None of that happened, and it will look great when you and Alan finish the details.”Few projects on a house interior can bring as significant a change as removing an interior wall between living areas to open up the space. Prior to the 1970s, many homes were designed with smaller defined spaces than we usually see in the current era, which is why “opening up the space” has become such a popular upgrade.There are several design considerations for removing an interior wall, including sight lines, traffic flow, lighting, resale value, privacy and family dynamics. If you decide the change is desirable, there are some logistical and structural considerations as well. These can be divided into questions about what else the wall is doing besides breaking up the space. Interior walls often provide hidden passage for utilities such as HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), electrical wiring and plumbing.Interior walls can also provide load-bearing support for the roof system, for the floors above, or for intermediate support of long spans and splices in the ceiling joists.In the case of the project featured here, we noted a pair of outlets in the wall and determined there were no water pipes or HVAC ducts living in the wall.
Installing A Flush Header Beam Light
However, a quick inspection of the rafter components in the attic space revealed that the ceiling joists were perpendicular to and supported by the unwanted interior wall.Right away we could see that the ceiling was too low to put a beam under the ceiling joists, so we asked our engineer if he could spec out a beam to go above the ceiling joists in the attic (supported on each end by wall framing). He did the calculations for a 3-1/2-by-12-in. Laminated beam to replace the bearing wall.After ordering the beam and removing the drywall from both sides of the wall, the remainder of the project was about installing the beam, removing the wall framing and filling the voids in the floor, ceiling and adjacent walls.