Opening up the Living Room Wall

early in the house renovation process we were challenged with figuring out what we wanted to do the living room is a good size but it was kind of closed off from the house these double doors were the main entrance but we wanted to open it up and make it more inviting and give the house a more open feel my wife is a big fan of the crown molding throughout the house so I was challenged with removing this wall while keeping the crown molding intact I started by removing the double doors they were pretty cool-looking and had some character to them I wanted to keep them and ended up repurposing them at the other end of the dining room I just started taking off the molding and realized that maybe I should lay down some protective covering on the floor so it doesn't get destroyed even if we were going to refinish it down the road which we did it would be good to not have any unnecessary dents in it okay now it's time to start destroying some stuff the molding came off super easy just took a pry bar and some elbow grease the walls weren't too tricky it's a layer of plaster on top of a layer of drywall underneath which makes her a really dusty combination it just makes a big mess I was careful to not cut away too much drywall near the edge of the opening if I cut away too much it would be a bit trickier when patching up the wall [Music] this created so much debris so I cleared a bunch of it out before moving on it was unclear if this was a major supporting wall or not but I wasn't about to take any risks before taking out any of the studs I constructed and installed a massively over engineered header beam in the Attic to support well everything around it I then started popping out the studs one by one unfortunately some of the drywall that I was trying to preserve gave way so that'll just have to get fixed later on [Music] before messing with any of the electrical I decoded which wires and circuits controlled what and made a new plan for the electrical outlets and light switches I turned off the power at the breaker box before disconnecting any of the wires the hallway only not [Music] [Music] when running new wires I was sure to label the wire at both ends to make it easier when it came to hooking things up after a bit more planning I figured out that I could cut the studs at the ends [Music] I thought that this corner was a supporting stud by the looks of it but clearly it's not [Music] this is the new spot for the light switches it'll be a four gang the left switch will be a three-way for the hallway lights next will be an outlet switch then a switch for the living room ceiling fan and finally a switch for the main living room lights after some finagling I got all the switches and wires connected at the box and tested the ceiling fan light this built-in cabinet had to go we have other plans to eventually turn this section into a mini wine cellar but for the meantime we just had to take out the cabinet parts it was almost time to start framing up the opening but I just had to clean up a bit more of this stuff such as some of the baseboards this stud on the floor and some of the plaster wall [Music] this corner required two layers of studs but since there are electrical wires running through the corner the first layer had to be broken up into pieces to merely act as a spacer the second layer was cut a bit short to allow space for the new header to sit on top of it [Music] next it was time to put in the new header this is a four by four beam cut to length and slips right into the gap at the top it rests on top of a set on one side and at the other side I screwed it into the neighboring stud with large framing screws I made sure it was leveled before mounting these large screws were countersunk into the beam so there wouldn't be any issues when patching it up with drywall on the other side I toenail some screws to connect the beam and supporting stud now that the beam was in place I trimmed with the drywall using a sawzall with a long blade I ran it along the bottom of the beam and flush cut the excess material I could begin patching the messed up portions of the wall I scribed a thin piece of plywood to put on as a backer board then put drywall right on top of it I scribed the drywall to make a small of gaps as possible to make mudding much easier I followed the same process for all three spots where chunks of the wall had fallen off [Music] for this section of the wall I needed to put on two layers of drywall to bring to the same level as the rest of the wall I [Music] was still working by myself so when hanging the drywall in the ceiling I simply used a clamp to give one of the drywall a place to rest as I secured the other end once all the drywall was on I could begin the seemingly never-ending process of mudding to be fair this was not a relatively simple part of the wall to mud because of all the corners wedding has to be done in layers you can't just gunk it on or else it'll crack so you put on the layer let it dry sand it smooth put on another layer and repeat the process until it looks good enough to paint every edge requires a metal corner bead to make a clean straight corner it's just a bit funny that this entire thing is almost made up of outside corners oh I should note that while I was opening up the living room wall I also took this opportunity to heighten and widen the opening into the kitchen [Music] [Music] this project was one of the first things I did on the inside when we bought the house and it really made a big difference to the look at the house the living room has a completely different feel and just made us eater to get going on more projects on the inside in addition to opening up the wall in the living room the living room fireplace will also get a major renovation ok that's it for now see ya I lost my light in here no no can you go over to this the attic stairs and turn on the timer climb up the stairs and turn on the timer go up the stairs

Channel: Ben Tardif

Views: 1,615,949

Rating: 4.7280574 out of 5

Keywords: wall, demo, remodel, living room, supporting wall, structure, drywall, corner, bead, renovation, diy, do it yourself, attic, header, fireplace, flow, feng shui, corner bead, sawzall, desctruction, rebuild, fix, rewire, electrical, outlet, 4 gang, light, switch, switches, baseboards, crown moulding, crown molding, moulding, molding, baseboard, wood floor, wooden floor, floors, hardwood, dusty, patch, patching, repair, solo, mud, mudding, drywall mud, sand, sanding

Id: 9i5CKZ7hZ0Y

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2019