Opening up a staircase with a load bearing wall (To get a bed up of course!)

It all started simple enough, we could not get our queen sized mattress up the staircase. I think the previous homeowners had a mattress with sections, so never had to confront the narrow passageway. The staircase was originally encased on all sides, with a doorway that had a removed door at the bottom. The effect was claustrophobic. Although the walls on either side of the staircase were load bearing, one would have to come down. Why? Well besides from being able to get a bed upstairs....

First, modern designed houses have larger open spaces with each room lending a welcoming view to the next room. Opening up the wall near the staircase would allow people to see that there is a second floor, and how to get there. Second, it allows you to see that there are other rooms on the first floor behind the staircase wall.  This will make the house look larger. Third, it allows heat from the first floor to flow upstairs and warm it better in the winter, improved air circulation!

Lets see what the encased staircase looked prior to any work:

From the above photo you can see how narrow and claustrophobic the staircase was, and in the photo below, you can see how low the wall comes at the top of the frame. It is as high as the door frame right next to it. Definitely not getting a large mattress up there!

Below is a picture of the wall that faces the staircase wall. At the time we had a decorative bookcase against the wall. You would never know that is a staircase behind there. Also, the house feels a bit smaller and it looks like there are just a bunch of doorways every where.

Below is a picture of the same wall with no bookcase and with both doorways on either side of the staircase wall visible:

The first step was to knock down the extra wall above the staircase doorway:

It already looks so much more open! Then the wood paneling (ek!) came off of the outer wall:

Then the cement board came down (note: not sheet rock, sheet rock would have been easier and cleaner, cement board is heavy, dusty and a mess), but the beams holding the weight of the floor above are kept in tact.

Those were left in because we installed a steel beam from one end of the wall to the other end of the stairs to hold the weight of the house and redistribute it from the center beams to the end beams.  That part was slightly complex and required a bit of finesse.  A make shift wall was built right next the weight bearing beams, to hold the ceiling's weight while these beams were cut and the steal beam was inserted in the ceiling.

Installing this required putting a beam on the top and bottom and outer sides, then hammering in the middle beams.  Below is a close up picture of the makeshift beams next to the old ones before they are cut.

Below you can see the steel beam in the ceiling holding the weight after the beams were cut and the extras removed:

The project as of now (without the compounding and paint) looks like this:

And the view is more open:

And as a bonus we took down the wall above the hallway door frame, to make it look more like a hall and less like a door.  This again follows with the modern idea of big open spaces, doorways and views.

One last look at how things were:

Next weekend, we will add in a banister and finish off the walls by compounding and painting.

In case you thought this was easy, it took four weekends of labor, a lot of tools (saws, crow bars, hammers) and back breaking work.  It was also messy, as you can see from my last two pics below ;-)

During the work my cat crawled into the space between the two floors, and it was not easy coaxing him out!  He was so filthy I had to give him a bath :-(

We closed on the house and moved in!

My husband and I are officially home owners now! Moving out was very hectic because we were due out of our apartment a day before we closed. We ended up sleeping on an air mattress in our empty apartment and sneaking out in the wee hours of the morning. We did the final inspection at 7:30am and then went to sign our lives away at the reality office.

I wanted to share some pictures of moving out of our old apartment in the city:

The living room with city views:

Here are some pictures of the new house pre-move-in, while we were doing the final inspection in the morning. This is the last time for a long time that you will be able to see the house empty:


The living room:

The kitchen:

The dining room:

The master bedroom:

Inspections have come back, there is Radon!

How unexpected, yet expected. The previous home owner said that they had a radon test before that came back negative. Maybe it did. However, ours did not. This is Pennsylvania, the state of quarries and rock and stone. To not have Radon in your basement here is almost impossible. So it was expected. As my father told me, people who do not have a radon system in PA are in denial. What is Radon and will this effect our resale of the house? Following what the EPA website says: Radon is a cancer-causing, radioactive gas. You can't see radon. And you can't smell it or taste it. But it may be a problem in your home. Radon is estimated to cause many thousands of deaths each year. That's because when you breathe air containing radon, you can get lung cancer. In fact, the Surgeon General has warned that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States today. Only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths. If you smoke and your home has high radon levels, your risk of lung cancer is especially high. Radon can be found all over the U.S. Radon comes from the natural (radioactive) breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water and gets into the air you breathe. Radon can be found all over the U.S. It can get into any type of building — homes, offices, and schools — and result in a high indoor radon level. I am just surprised that the previous home owner and tenants had radon for so many years and never took care of it.

First Post, What is my story?

My husband and I are still trying to finish all the paperwork on our first house. We have only just completed the back and forth bargaining with the seller (a nice older Lady ready to downsize) and settled on a price. Now all the other nuances have to be taken care of: the inspections, titles and assessment.

At this point we are craving for it all to be done ASAP. My husband and I misjudged how long the whole process will take and our apartment lease ends Sept 10th, but our scheduled close date is Sept 30th. We are going to be homeless for 20 days! However, the most important thing to both of us is that we stop throwing our money down the drain to live in our high rise apartment, and start putting it into an investment that we can get a return from.

Here is a picture of the house that has made all our suffering worthwhile: