3 Things to Think About Before Eliminating Interior Walls

Design trends in home construction have a tendency to change over time. Many modern homeowners want an interior living space that feels open and has a great flow. Achieving an open floor plan when you live in an older property is not always easy.

Removing some of the interior walls that close off your living space can be an effective way to open up your home's floor plan.

Eliminating interior walls sounds easy enough, but you need to think about some important things before you have a contractor start the demolition process.

1. What Type of Wall Is It?

Before you make the decision to tear down an interior wall, be sure that you identify the type of wall you are targeting.

Some of the interior walls in your home are load-bearing walls. This means that they play a crucial role in helping to support the weight of your home's roof. Eliminating a load-bearing wall could compromise the structural stability of your home.

You can tear down a load-bearing wall, but you will need to call in a team of professionals to redistribute the weight the wall previously supported.

An architect and a structural engineer can work with your contractor to determine if a horizontal beam or a beam-and-post system can successfully redistribute weight so that you can tear down a load-bearing wall.

2. What Is Inside the Wall?

Once you know whether or not the wall you want to eliminate is a load-bearing wall, determine what types of things may be within the wall. Access to your home's original blueprints can be helpful when trying to locate hidden service components.

Many of your home's vital systems feature components that run through the walls. Plumbing pipes, electrical wiring, and HVAC conduits are some of the most common service components in residential walls.

Any service components in an interior wall you want to remove will need to be relocating and installing in another location. This process could leave your home without access to plumbing, electricity, or heating and cooling services for a few days.

Coordinate the relocation of service components with your contractor as you prepare to remove an interior wall so that you can make accommodations for system outages.

3. How Will You Fill the Flooring Gap?

A bare patch of subfloor will be exposed once you remove an interior wall. Consider the type of flooring that you will use to conceal and protect the subfloor where the wall once stood.

A lot of homeowners choose to install new flooring throughout the rooms that have been made into a single living space with an interior wall removal. New flooring can create continuity and eliminate the need to patch over the subfloor where the wall stood.

If you do not plan to install new flooring as part of your home renovation, work with your contractor to source flooring materials that can fill in the gap left behind once you remove an interior wall.

Any interior wall that you do not like is removable. Just gather vital information about the wall so that you will be able to weigh all of your options.

The more you know about the purpose and design of the wall you want to get rid of, the better prepared you will be to accommodate the wall's removal in your renovation budget and timeline.

Contact JO Contractors to remove your interior wall and open up your living space. We can help you plan for the removal, renovation, and remodel work that it entails so that you can enjoy a beautiful open floor plan. Let us know about your project today.