Beam me up Scotty!

Maybe they were Star Trek fans… that would make more sense.

Because I want to make the extension at least partly open plan I’ve been trying to identify which walls are structural and which aren’t (all the walls in the house – loadbearing or not are brick).

You can see in this floorplan that there is a half wall in the kitchen:

Original Floorplan Downstairs

That half wall is cavity wall thickness and was connected to a boxed in area which I feared was surrounding a load bearing beam.  Next door don’t have a ‘half wall’ but I did notice they did also have a beam – so it didn’t look promising.  You can see the pine clad beam in this photo:

Beam in Situ

I wondered if there had once been a wall there to separate the room into two – but that wall would have ended up in the middle of the doorway (see the floorplan), perhaps the door had also moved but, as I’ve said before, the weird skirting board is everywhere so it seems very unlikely the layout has ever changed.

So on the way home from work one night I decided to try to determine, once and for all, if that boxed in area was hiding a load supporting beam or not. Unfortunately, being weak, feeble and 5ft 1 – my lack of purchase while teetering on a padded stool in my work shoes wasn’t the best so I only managed to prise the boxing open by about an inch.

Beam wedged open

I slide my phone in and took a photo. And the conclusion?

inside of beam

I was expecting pipes or wires at the very least but no, it’s completely empty!!!! The only thing of note was that the ceiling was painted blue at the time the beam boxing was installed. So it’s definitely not load bearing then! Hurrah. But why on earth would someone install a fake beam?

Anyway Matti came by and I asked him to pull it down.  Here he is showing it who’s boss! (Life must be so much easier when you’re not titch)

matti beam

and the beam was no more:

Beam no more

Well, except for the other beam but that one is definitely hiding pipes.

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