A single-day structural intervention that opened up a room. The clients had taken in a fire-damaged stud wall as part of a wider renovation and wanted the use of the room changed — that meant the wall had to go and something had to carry what it was carrying.
The challenge
Fire-damaged framing means structural assumptions cannot be trusted. The original wall might have been load-bearing, might not, but in its damaged state we had to treat it as if it were. Beam size came from the engineer attached to the project’s warrant.
What we did
Wall stripped back, fire-damaged sections cleared to clean structure. Padstones placed at each bearing point. Steel beam dropped in with appropriate temporary support, then bedded, levelled, and made good. Plasterer followed on the same week.
The result
A small piece of a large renovation, but the kind of small piece that has to be right. The room now has the span the new use needed.
Materials
- Structural steel beam, sized to engineer's calc
- Padstones at each bearing
