I'm in the process of turning three rooms into one big room. And, like many of the posts, my question is on load bearing walls and headers. I'm just in the process of taking of some of the sheetrock and lathe and plaster (lots of layers, yuck) and am looking at what I have to work with. I've never actually dealt with load bearing walls before. Anyway, using common sense - any wall on the 1st floor running parallel to the floor joists of the 2nd floor and not supporting a crossbeam is not a load bearing wall, correct? There's another wall that runs perpendicular to the floor joists, but the construction of the wall is quite strange for one that bears a load. The wall is thin, the 2x4s (old, actual 2x4s) are turned sideways, if you know what I mean. And there is an approximately 40" doorway without a beam across, instead has a couple of short 2x4s turned sideways that are nailed to the top board that touches the joists and to a 2x2 board on the bottom that is above the doorway. I do suspect the wall to be bearing something though, as there is a large beam almost directly underneath in the basement, a wall on the 2nd floor directly above, and the span the joists run across is around 17 ft. I will get pictures up as soon as I can. Any initial responses? FYI, I'm being careful and slow and smart.

 

Just a DIYer here, but if you have a beam under the wall in the basement, and a wall above it upstairs, it's a supporting wall. Just because the 2x4's are turned flat-ways doesn't mean they wouldn't support as much. Primary thing you need to find out is if the ceiling joists break above your wall. I suspect they do. Cut a hole in your ceiling and look at the stringers above that wall. If they meet there above your wall instead of being solid on through to the other wall, that'll make it much more difficult to remove the supporting wall because you'll have to put in an adequate sized beam, and supporting posts on each end of the beam. Even if they are solid from one side of the house to the other, there will probably have to be a supporting beam - maybe just not as big.
More confused?

 

Not at all. I'm tracking. The basement beam isn't directly below the wall, but about a foot away, which is why I'm unsure. Gotcha on the sideways 2x4 construction. It just seems that a wall made that way is more of an afterthought, but it might just be the way they did it when they built my house... it's old. The part of the wall over the doorway is what really gets me, because it looks so weak, the weight all resting on a 2 x 2 over a 4 foot span that includes three joists. I just got home and opened up the ceiling (that was the step I chose to refrain from at 1:30 AM this morning - as there are actually three layers of ceiling in the room I'm working in...), and found an interesting thing with the joists. The joists span the gap between the exterior walls, but there is a single 2x4 running alongside every joist that, based upon my amateur analysis, are only used to hold up the lathe and plaster in order to keep weight off the floor joists. It's possible that, and I'll be able to see this when I take out more of the ceiling, only the 2x4s holding up the ceiling have weight bearing on the wall.