Knocking down supporting wall.

[FinglisHobbit]

Hi guys.

The house we are buying has the common layout of a front living room, with a dining room to the rear.

I would be interested in knocking the wall through to make a more open plan space.

The house is quite a standard 1930s semi detached.

There is no plumbing against that wall and we plan to rewire the house anyway so plumbing and electrics shouldnt have much impact on things.

Can anyone give me a ballpark figure from experience on the cost to do such a job. I understand we would need to pay for a structural engineer / rsj and labour/materials.

Is it an expensive job?

 

[a1ex2001]

Hi guys.

The house we are buying has the common layout of a front living room, with a dining room to the rear.

I would be interested in knocking the wall through to make a more open plan space.

The house is quite a standard 1930s semi detached.

There is no plumbing against that wall and we plan to rewire the house anyway so plumbing and electrics shouldnt have much impact on things.

Can anyone give me a ballpark figure from experience on the cost to do such a job. I understand we would need to pay for a structural engineer / rsj and labour/materials.

Is it an expensive job?

There is a good chance that the wall is non structural which will reduce costs as all you will need is a concrete lintel but either way it is not an expensive job especially if you are planning to decorate and replace floorings anyway. We had a quote for a similar piece of work that came in about 1k we never actually went through with it!

 

[WillyNelson]

Do you know which way your upstairs floorboards run? If they're side to side it's probably a load bearing wall, front to back and it's probably not.

Are you taking the whole wall out or just knocking through a double doorway size hole? Taking the whole wall will obviously be more costly and require better support. A door might be able to get away without an RSJ.

 

[FinglisHobbit]

We are just in the solicitor search stages of purchase so I dont know enough about the building yet to tell you about floorboards .


The plan would be like this lady has done here.

http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/h.../change-just-one-thing-removing-dividing-wall

Only difference between that and the house we are buying is that its the opposite way round, with fireplace on the right wall opposed to the left.

It mentions some prices on that site but its abit dated now and I was just wondering if people had experience.

Thanks for the responses guys.