TL;DR. This will be a diary of an interior remodel project I am taking on in our house. The permit is good for a year, but I *hope* I can wrap it up by next Spring. <Edit> Your comments are welcome.
When we bought our house 2 years ago, we always wanted to open up a wall between the kitchen and the future living room. We live in a manufactured 1986 split-level ranch and the doorways are narrow (30") and obviously "open concept" wasn't a thing yet.
The ceilings in most of the house are pretty low--7'6", but the kitchen (back side of that middle unit) ceiling is vaulted from the rear of the house up to 10' where the two halves of the house meet. I learned this is called a studio vault truss. The kitchen is usually bright and sunny most of the day (east facing) whereas the LR remains dark (neighbors have a 30' tall row of junipers between our houses. We had some other requirements inside that necessitated the addition/subtraction of walls, too. We also have some changes we want to do to the exterior, but will touch on that later.
It was also obvious that center wall is load bearing and I should enlist the help of a pro. So earlier this year I started looking for an architect/structural engineer to help draft plans for a building permit. We were still overseas at the time and we started working with a firm, but for whatever reason, they ghosted me after a couple meetings (after I asked for references). So then I just went to Yelp and found a guy not too far from our house who could do it and had MANY good Yelp reviews. I sent him a powerpoint of what we were thinking and after some calls and texts, he met us at our house in mid-July when we moved back. After a couple visits, a signed contract (we were paying per hour plus travel), and a couple drafts and emails back and forth, I had a plan set with his engineer's stamp which I submitted to the county permit office. Everything is handled electronically there and you can see the progress of each approval step. The county had no questions and after a week, I got my permit electronically (one week ago).
My engineer is actually retired and does this for "fun" now. He's also an engineer and not an architect so it was on us to design it and he just provided the drawings. He uses software called Chief Architect but couldn't or didn't know how to export it to anything I could use in Visio or Sketchup. No biggie. The drawing on the left is actually from the real estate appraiser, but I took his flat drawing he exported to PDF, drew walls on top in Sketchup and projected them up to help me and my wife visualize the new space. You can see his drawing peaking out below the model. He was pretty impressed by that. My wife went back to work in Central America so I was the go between. Since we're paying him hourly, I didn't want to do round after round of drawings so this worked for me and my wife. For example, my wife and I placed tape on the wall in July where we thought we wanted the walls to end. He measured and drew to those markings, but after seeing the render, my wife and I decided to bring the doorways in a few inches on each side. His final permit set was a mix of his flat drawings from Chief Architect and hand drawings on graph paper for the foundation pier and new rafter layout.
The middle section of the house is over a 4' tall crawlspace. There are concrete masonry block piers about every 8' that run down the middle of the house. One end of the new wall falls over an existing pier so I'm good there. The other end is about 2' away from a pier so the engineer specified a new post column there although he was on the fence if it was really necessary but better safe than sorry. My permit only required a framing and close-in inspection, but no footer inspection for the new post. I didn't want to frame the new walls and have the inspector realize no one checked the support column so the county added a footer inspection on my request.
Yesterday (Friday) after work, I started demoing the main wall. I need to locate exactly where my jack and king studs will be so I can locate my support column. I drilled 3" inspection holes in each stud bay first to check for wiring and plumbing with my GoPro. I mentioned this is a manufactured house. I was expecting two separate 2x4 walls, but I was also expecting to see the back of the drywall in my LR. I found this foil-faced hardboard instead on the backs of each stud wall that I also have to cut out. I also learned the studs are offset from each other. That horizontal length of Romex was capped off and just hanging out in the stud bay. It's not hot, but I think I will now demo beyond the right side of the new opening to make sure it's not connected to anything. There's a receptacle to the right where the in and out cables run down from the attic. That is going to be relocated to the right of the opening.
Today I will at least demo the LR drywall and do more investigating. The engineer is calling for a doubled up 1 3/4" LVL beam sitting on double jack studs (for each half of the house--4 LVLs total). I've still got to dig the footer, get it inspected, and install the post before I can even cut out the studs (after temp wall) so that's probably an October project. I still have to source those beams, too.
My wife returns Monday night so I also need to clean the house.
I'll just keep adding to this post as I go. I welcome your comments and your advice as this is all new to me.
Thanks,
Paul
When we bought our house 2 years ago, we always wanted to open up a wall between the kitchen and the future living room. We live in a manufactured 1986 split-level ranch and the doorways are narrow (30") and obviously "open concept" wasn't a thing yet.
The ceilings in most of the house are pretty low--7'6", but the kitchen (back side of that middle unit) ceiling is vaulted from the rear of the house up to 10' where the two halves of the house meet. I learned this is called a studio vault truss. The kitchen is usually bright and sunny most of the day (east facing) whereas the LR remains dark (neighbors have a 30' tall row of junipers between our houses. We had some other requirements inside that necessitated the addition/subtraction of walls, too. We also have some changes we want to do to the exterior, but will touch on that later.
It was also obvious that center wall is load bearing and I should enlist the help of a pro. So earlier this year I started looking for an architect/structural engineer to help draft plans for a building permit. We were still overseas at the time and we started working with a firm, but for whatever reason, they ghosted me after a couple meetings (after I asked for references). So then I just went to Yelp and found a guy not too far from our house who could do it and had MANY good Yelp reviews. I sent him a powerpoint of what we were thinking and after some calls and texts, he met us at our house in mid-July when we moved back. After a couple visits, a signed contract (we were paying per hour plus travel), and a couple drafts and emails back and forth, I had a plan set with his engineer's stamp which I submitted to the county permit office. Everything is handled electronically there and you can see the progress of each approval step. The county had no questions and after a week, I got my permit electronically (one week ago).
My engineer is actually retired and does this for "fun" now. He's also an engineer and not an architect so it was on us to design it and he just provided the drawings. He uses software called Chief Architect but couldn't or didn't know how to export it to anything I could use in Visio or Sketchup. No biggie. The drawing on the left is actually from the real estate appraiser, but I took his flat drawing he exported to PDF, drew walls on top in Sketchup and projected them up to help me and my wife visualize the new space. You can see his drawing peaking out below the model. He was pretty impressed by that. My wife went back to work in Central America so I was the go between. Since we're paying him hourly, I didn't want to do round after round of drawings so this worked for me and my wife. For example, my wife and I placed tape on the wall in July where we thought we wanted the walls to end. He measured and drew to those markings, but after seeing the render, my wife and I decided to bring the doorways in a few inches on each side. His final permit set was a mix of his flat drawings from Chief Architect and hand drawings on graph paper for the foundation pier and new rafter layout.
The middle section of the house is over a 4' tall crawlspace. There are concrete masonry block piers about every 8' that run down the middle of the house. One end of the new wall falls over an existing pier so I'm good there. The other end is about 2' away from a pier so the engineer specified a new post column there although he was on the fence if it was really necessary but better safe than sorry. My permit only required a framing and close-in inspection, but no footer inspection for the new post. I didn't want to frame the new walls and have the inspector realize no one checked the support column so the county added a footer inspection on my request.
Yesterday (Friday) after work, I started demoing the main wall. I need to locate exactly where my jack and king studs will be so I can locate my support column. I drilled 3" inspection holes in each stud bay first to check for wiring and plumbing with my GoPro. I mentioned this is a manufactured house. I was expecting two separate 2x4 walls, but I was also expecting to see the back of the drywall in my LR. I found this foil-faced hardboard instead on the backs of each stud wall that I also have to cut out. I also learned the studs are offset from each other. That horizontal length of Romex was capped off and just hanging out in the stud bay. It's not hot, but I think I will now demo beyond the right side of the new opening to make sure it's not connected to anything. There's a receptacle to the right where the in and out cables run down from the attic. That is going to be relocated to the right of the opening.
Today I will at least demo the LR drywall and do more investigating. The engineer is calling for a doubled up 1 3/4" LVL beam sitting on double jack studs (for each half of the house--4 LVLs total). I've still got to dig the footer, get it inspected, and install the post before I can even cut out the studs (after temp wall) so that's probably an October project. I still have to source those beams, too.
My wife returns Monday night so I also need to clean the house.
I'll just keep adding to this post as I go. I welcome your comments and your advice as this is all new to me.
Thanks,
Paul
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