I need to enlarge a 24" master bathroom door. Want to put in at least 30" to match the match the room door. I am pretty handy but never did a door job before. So far I checked two things.

1) There are no wires or pipes in the wall next to it. The next stud is about 10" away, so should be no problem.

2) The rafters in the ceiling run parallel to the wall where the door is. So it should not be a load bearing wall. I do not know if there is a rafter right above that wall.

Questions:

1) Do I need to support the ceiling when I pull out the frame for the old door.

2) Can I do this job without removing the drywall all the way to the next stud. I don't want to do that because our wall thickness is weird, does not match anything. Someone said our walls are "slates?" May be not the right word. But they do not look like the drywalls in the store. It is more like 20" horizontal strips of drywall with a very hard "plaster" on it. So the thickness is not standard. Is there anyway to slip the side framing between the existing walls, fix/nail in place and then cut the excess drywall.

Thanks,

 

What you have are old walls, something between lath & plaster and sheetrock. (Very early 50's.)

No, you don't have to support the ceiling. It's not a bearing wall.

Jsut frame in the new opening and plan on doing A LOT of mudding with joint compound to make the two meet. Feather it in, a little at a time. You have a 3 or 4 day project in front of you.

 

Thanks Lefty,

A lot of mud as you said. I had to fix another place in the utility room, took many layers.

What are these walls called? For future reference.

 

They're plaster walls -- they used the strips of perforated sheetrock instead of lathe boards. (Faster to install than all those little lathe boards, so the contractor could make a little more money, or at least reduce his bid a little.)

 

After you remove the old wall surface, at least to the center of the next stud, you might consider "padding" out the studs with plywood or luan strips. I would glue them in addition to
mechanically fastening them. You'll use less mus and it will be a neater and striaighter job.

Now the problem, once you remove the old door and its frame, your going to find out that the door jamb thickness
is probably larger than normal to account for . A new prehung door will likely be 4 9/16 so... you may want to think about how will you deal with that. BEFORE you buy the door and long before you do the tear out.

Dont forget you can get drywall 1/2 and 5/8 so be picky and be careful.

Good luck.