Northridge Structural Work for Opening a Kitchen Into an Addition
Opening a Northridge kitchen into a new rear addition: temporary posts, an engineered beam and a work order that keeps the kitchen usable, inspected by LADBS.
"How much of the kitchen do we lose while the back wall is open?" For a Northridge rear addition that joins a new family room to the kitchen, the honest answer is a strip along the old wall, closed off behind a dust barrier, while the sink and stove stay in use. The addition is framed and roofed first, so the old wall comes out late and the gap stays open for as short a stretch as the work allows.
Build the room, then cut the wall
The new family room gets its footings, slab, walls and roof while the existing back wall still stands between it and the kitchen. Only when the addition is closed against weather does any cutting start. Temporary stud walls go up on each side of the old wall to catch the ceiling joists and rafters. The wall is then removed, and a beam sized by the engineer is lifted into place across the new opening, and posts at both ends carry it down to footings poured for them.
What the kitchen goes through
Plastic barriers with zip doors seal off the work strip, and the floor beyond them is covered. Anything on the old wall, such as a sink vent, an outlet or a gas line, gets rerouted before the cut so the kitchen keeps running. Once the beam is in and inspected, the ceiling is patched, the floor is joined across the opening with a transition that sits flush, and the barrier comes down. Dinner can then move from the kitchen into the new room through an opening where a wall used to stand.
Structural Work in Northridge: what families ask
Footings poured for a single story are the first thing to check. An engineer compares them, and the walls above them, against the added weight and the sideways loads of an earthquake. Where they fall short, the drawings add footing sections, plywood shear walls and hold-downs, and LADBS reviews those drawings before any work starts.
Begin by confirming the wall carries load, from the joists above it and anything stacked below. The engineer then sizes a beam, its posts and the footings under those posts. Temporary walls hold the ceiling during the swap, and the opening is patched after the city inspector approves the framing.
LADBS sends an inspector at each stage the permit lists, since Northridge is permitted by the City of Los Angeles. That means footing trenches with steel before concrete, then the beam, posts, straps and nailing before any drywall goes up. Nothing is closed until the inspector signs the card.
Structural Work in other cities
Other projects we take on in Northridge
Your Northridge project, start to finish
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