Category: Bump-Out Removal

Bump-Out Removal: New Exterior Wall

March 14, 2017 / / 1 Comment

The first step in lopping off the bump-out is supporting the structure. As it turns out, the bump-out is not very well engineered. The roof of the house is supported by the North and South walls. In the case of the bump-out, the 2×6 ceiling joists have a clear span of about 14′ from the partition wall near the center of the house to the outside of the bump-out wall. There is a 2×4 flat across these joists that the rafters are notched into. A 2×6 is simply not strong enough to support any kind of load at a 14′ span. More alarming still is the fact that the walls of the bump-out are not framed well from a structural standpoint, with the window intersecting all but one of the bearing studs and, of course, no proper headers.

Bump-out ceiling structure

I framed a new section of exterior wall, including partial sheathing. Normally I would have just assembled the framing and put the sheathing on after it was in place, but there isn’t much space inside the bump-out to work once this wall is up. I left out the bottom of the sheathing because the last pieces of sheathing will also need to cover the ends of the floor joists after we cut them back, as well as the top corner so we can pass the windows back into the second floor after we remove them. If I was smarter, I would have put the gap in the middle course of sheathing so I’d have a nice doorway, but I’m not and I didn’t. As I mentioned in my previous post, the plan is to disassemble the bump-out from the inside, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time way up on top of a ladder, handling heavy chunks of house.

Framing and sheathing the new wall

Getting this section of wall tipped into place proved vastly more difficult than anticipated, because of the ceiling joists. In the center of the bump-out, the ceiling joists were sagging almost a half inch lower than the sides, simply because of the weight they were carrying. I didn’t want to frame the wall section short enough to fit, so instead I fought a contest of wills with the mostly-upright wall section and the ceiling joists, trying to hammer the section completely vertical without completely destroying it. I employed a number of methods to get it into position, including cutting the undersides of the bowed joists with a circular saw, using another stud to jack up the joist, and finally using two 3′ pry bars at the same time while kicking at the sill plate to get it the last inch into position.

Tipped up, but not all the way
Getting close
Still a gap at the bottom
Finally screwing into place

I went into my weekend thinking I’d have the wall up in a few hours, and instead it took both days. I didn’t even get it screwed into place until Monday evening. Even then I needed to use an array of clamps to get the sides aligned before I screwed it in. This is unfortunately how this project seems to go with some frequency. Hope springs eternal: maybe I can get the new sistered rafters into place with a bit less struggle.

Lopping Off the Bump-Out: Planning

March 10, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Bump-out

One of the things we decided to do early on in our project was to remove the second floor bump-out. This is a cantilevered overhang above the sidewalk along the side of our house. It’s about ten feet long, extends about two feet out, and currently has four windows. It’s not an unattractive house feature, and because it’s on the South side of the house and the neighboring house is only a story and a half, it brings in a lot of natural light. It’s also original to the house, meaning that the floor structure is the same joists extended out past the end of the wall, rather than a poorly tacked on expansion as we thought originally. So why are we getting rid of it?

There’s a few reasons we don’t want the bump-out. First is the location from an interior perspective. The wet wall of the house hasn’t moved, despite our complete overhaul of the floor plan. Because of this, the second floor bathrooms are located in a specific place (right where the old one was, and where the kitchen was). The old bathroom was fairly small, about as wide as a bathtub and about as deep as a tub, a toilet, and a pedestal sink. We’d like a bigger bathroom since it’s the main bathroom in the house and it will also be incorporating the laundry room. Given where the stairs and hall are, the bathroom has to extend into the part of the house where the bump-out is. While the bump-out was well suited to being a dining room, it’s less suited to be part of a bathroom. When I was designing the second floor layout, I tried a number of configurations to incorporate the bump-out into a bedroom, but it just doesn’t fit.

From the back

From an exterior point of view, it’s mere inches from the neighbor’s roof. We actually had hail break a bump-out window because it ricocheted off their roof. It makes the already dark sidewalk along the house even darker. It complicates the roof line on the side of the house we want to install solar panels. From a building envelope point of view, it makes insulation and water management more difficult. In short, it doesn’t fit our our design, and we’re taking it off.

Bump-out interior

With that decided, how to do it? Since our basement is three feet out of the ground and our floors are ten feet tall, even the bottom of the bump-out is pretty high off the ground, to say nothing of the roof. Because it’s on the narrow side of the house, we can barely put the extension ladder up if it’s against the house, though we can put it against the sides of the bump-out. I came up with a plan for not only removing the bump out from the inside, but putting in the replacement exterior wall from the inside as well. Reality may intervene with this approach, but at the outset at least, and with a fresh pack of reciprocating saw blades we’re going to find out!