# Opening up a staircase



## Bmn1989 (Jan 7, 2016)

So I just recently purchased a home that was built around 1850, and I am gutting the inside top to bottom. I would like to open up my stairway by cutting the studs flush with the stringer but when they built the house they notched the studs around the floor joist. I don't believe it is a load bearing wall but I would like a second opinion before I go through with it. I'm not really familiar with working on older homes like this. Here are some pics of what I'm dealing with.


----------



## nealtw (Jan 7, 2016)

Welcome to the site.
We would consider any wall holding up a single floor joist around a staircase a bearing wall.
So is there weight from the roof landing on top?
Do the studs extend down to the foundation?
Are talking about the wall above the floor or below?


----------



## Bmn1989 (Jan 7, 2016)

There is no weight from the roof on the wall and it does not go to the foundation. The studs go from the first floor all the way to the second floor ceiling. Here's another pic that may give you a better angle. And I'm talking about the wall below the floor.


----------



## nealtw (Jan 7, 2016)

I can give you ideas and things to look at and think about, but it should really be looked at by an engineer.
So you can look again, you have the floor, the wall above and maybe the ceiling above adding weight and dosn't include people and furniture, so a fair amout of weight.
If this was new construction, the joist wiould be at least a double 2x10 to a max of 12 ft, anything more than 12 feet would require a beam of some sort. That is not just the opening but all the way to the support posts at each end.
The support posts on each end would be at least 2 studs minimum, often 3 or 4.
The catch to all that is the foundation, as it is strong enough to support the wall and all it's load, the unknown is how much it can it take when half that weight lands in one spot.
The outside foundation is usuall a few feet high and the weight travels down thru it spreading out on a 45* angle but foundation on the inside of a house is usually just a little curb on a shallow footing, and it is anybodys guess what they have under there. And they do break thru from time to time.
In new construction the footing would be enlarged to fit the weight and with steel added to help spread the load.


----------



## Snoonyb (Jan 8, 2016)

Bmn1989 said:


> So I just recently purchased a home that was built around 1850, and I am gutting the inside top to bottom. I would like to open up my stairway by cutting the studs flush with the stringer but when they built the house they notched the studs around the floor joist. I don't believe it is a load bearing wall but I would like a second opinion before I go through with it. I'm not really familiar with working on older homes like this. Here are some pics of what I'm dealing with.



You are dealing with ballon framing so you will be money ahead by contacting an old house organization in your area.

Also you can add perspective, IE. top, bottom, left and right to your pictures by stepping back 10' or so.

The broader the description, the easier to define.


----------



## bud16415 (Jan 8, 2016)

Yes that&#8217;s balloon framing and it is how both my old homes were built. One thing I learned about old house framing is that it is not always cut and dry as to what is load bearing and not. The way we build today is pretty straight forward compared to 150 years ago. Many &#8220;Non load bearing&#8221; members do carry some load. They may not sit on footings and may not show structure thru to the roof line where they would carry snow loads but they do support this and that. These homes were built in a time of no rules and every carpenter had his method of doing things and a lot of it was seat of the pants. I have always been overly careful with removing structure and often used my own seat of the pants methods to add new structure to at least exceed what I have taken out. I always figured it has been standing a 150 years so the test of time was the engineer report and as a home owner I felt ok overdoing replacement structure. Now if you hire it done the pros have to take a very different approach and do a study that gets them back to points of footing they can understand and measure. 

As for your particular problem it&#8217;s hard to say as mentioned the photos are too tight to show the big picture. I personally try not to modernize the look of an old structure like this. They closed in stairwells mostly for heating reasons and most of the time they had an interior door on the staircase. The house I just bought in cleaning the attic out I found two such doors that had cooked up there for at least 70 years. I rehung them back in their original spots the stairwell and between the kitchen and living room. They both get used quite a bit now.


----------



## Bmn1989 (Jan 9, 2016)

Now that ive looked at it a little bit more I think it does provide some support. The ceiling joist upstairs rest on top of all the studs on that wall.  So I think what I might end up doing is just adding jack studs on the 2 furthest studs and building a header to support the weight after I cut out all the other studs in between.


----------



## bud16415 (Jan 9, 2016)

Now the tricky part comes in. How many studs and how big a header? 
I always replace all the ones I take out and add one on each end when I can. As to header size what will your span be and how thick can you make the header? 

By the way I&#8217;m not a framer or a pro. Just a guy that tries to do his best on his own DIY.


----------



## Bmn1989 (Jan 9, 2016)

I think about 4 inches would be as wide as I could go. And I'd be taking out 4 or 5 studs


----------



## slownsteady (Jan 10, 2016)

is that 4 inches worth it?


----------



## bud16415 (Jan 10, 2016)

So if you set the header on 3 studs on each end and used a double 2X with plywood in the center that should do the job. Size the 2X according to the span and how much load you think you might have. I would put in a few temporary supports off to the side before I started taking out studs. Depending on what you see happen then might give you another clue to how much load you got. It&#8217;s a seat of the pants method but the same way the rest of the house was built way back when.


----------



## nealtw (Jan 10, 2016)

I would still suggest an engineer should look at this.
I would suggest to him that the studs could be cut above the old joist, studs removed. Then you could slide a 2x up inside.
Or with a with temp wall in the basement and 2 on the upper floor you could remove the joist to and install a good sized beam or header as required,
The extra height of that beam can actually go up into the wall above, making it dissapear.

So the question is beam size and the bearing point in the basement.


----------

