We are doing a complete master bath/bedroom Reno on our 2nd floor and now that we are down to bare studs and joists we can see two walls that we want to remove that should be partitions only. One is a closet and the other the 8' section of wall that houses our bathroom. Both walls have double top plates and are running perpendicular to the ceiling joists. The joists appear to be 13' in length and are held up by the 12' span of the room... Except where they meet another set of parallel joists in the 8' stretch of bathroom and these appear to be braced by that bathroom wall. ... I can probably move that supports there over 10" but the closet walls are my concern. I intend to rebuild the closet closer to the centre of the room and make it 10x5 instead of its present 12x6.... Same orientation.

Questions
How do I tell if these walls have any load bearing capacity?
And... Can I move the bathroom end studs 10", install a double top plate reinforced by another 2x4 over the 8' section of wall, but still supporting the overlapping ceiling joists?

 

Welcome to the forums.

How about some pictures?
http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...-pictures.html

 

HI Mitch... thanks for the welcome... looks like a good forum... just wish I'd found it earlier... oh well better late than never!
The red square is the joist overlap I am concerned about. This area is right at the 8' bathroom partition/wall. The overlap is directly over the double top plate. The top plates are supported by a double 2x4 post on either end of its 8' span. On the floor below there is no bearing wall directly underneath the end closest to the red square.
The green square shows the corner of the walk-in closet. The short section is over a bearing wall downstairs. I planned on moving this 6x12' closet further to the right by 8' and "shrinking" it down to a 5x9.5' closet. The remainder of the room has spans of 12' across the room with no additional support.

 

Here is a photo from the other direction... view is from inside the existing closet and into the 5x8' bathroom. I would like to remove both partitions/walls, rebuilding only the closet further into the room as explained in the last post.
Just to the right of where you see the bedroom door (far left) and running between the edge of the existing bathroom wall and the closet wall is where we have planned on putting in converging French door, both 24", so I really need to be as tight to the one corner as I can get, if not slightly into it.

 

From the picture ( the one with the red square ) indicates that 8 foot section of wall is indeed part of a supporting wall. It also looks as though you've removed studs from that supporting wall. You now have compromised the support to those joists above without putting in any bearing support.
If I were you put those studs back in place-- at least for now.

To be honest , this is a structural concern here and if you want to open up that supporting wall you really need to have a signed engineer's drawing indicating what supporting members will be used. You also need this to submit to your municipal building department for your permit , which is required.

 

Thanks Canuk... I've replaced a few of the studs temporarily but still need to be able to open up the space for our reno to work.
That 8' wall is not sitting over a bearing wall as it stands right now. Is it possible for us to build an adjoining set of braces (1 by the outside wall and one at the other end of the 8' span, sufficient enough to then support three 2x6's or 2x8's bolted together that would span the 8' length and thus act as a support for the upper joists?
This is about the same length as what we had done in our kitchen a few years ago and they did a similar thing, only using 2x10's or 12's (can't remember which) as they were done on the main floor and needed to support the entire upper floor as well.
Would that work and if so would the 2x6's be sufficient or should they be 2x8's? In either case we will end up with a visible beam of sorts (covered with drywall of course)