Remove ceiling/joists in room to have cathedral ceilings ?

Nov 11, 2007 4 Replies

Funny what you think of when you live alone - does this sound insane or something worth exploring ?



I have a room that was added on to the back of my house. It's about



18 x 28 (feet) - a big whopping room. The outside of the room is brick, with 2x4 framing inside the brick. Across the shorter dimension of the room are 18' long 2x8's, 26" on center. There's a normal shingled roof over top, it's sort of a shallow pitch.

What are the odds I can remove all the ceiling joists and open up the room to have a cathedral ceiling ? Without everything falling down that is !



The roof ridge runs parallel to the ceiling joists. The picture below, if you looking at it in courier font, shows the idea.



I don't plan on rippint out joists without having a licensed engineer look at it, but people on this group have good ideas and if this is totally idiotic I will shelf it. It would give a little more zip to a very boring ranch house and the ceiling in the room is these cheesey old acoustical tiles that have to be replaced anyway...


======================================= | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | garage | | | | | | | | | | | | | | =====================| | | | | | laundry | | | | | =================== ========= | | | | | | | rest of house | | | | | |



it will be very expensive, you will need a new ridge beam, and lots of framing. big rooms should have higher cielings, a off the cuff estimate? 20 grand.

I am not sure of your construction but ceiling joists commonly tie the walls together so that the pressure of the rafters does not push them apart and collapse everything. I have seen this happen where an amateur builder was going to install the ceiling joists after he built the roof.

Don Young

Not at all good.

Tear off the joists one by one and replace with scissor trusses to make the vaulted ceiling you lust for. Around $30-40 K ought to get it done nicely, HTH

Joe

Hi, Structural engineering according to law of physics. Any thing is possible if $$ is no objection, LOL!

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