How To Tear Down a Wall

While some home remodeling projects are simple are require no major demolition or renovations, others require the entire removal of a wall. If you have an upcoming project that requires tearing down a wall in your home, there are a few things you should know in order to ensure the safety of you and your family.

Is The Wall Load-Bearing

Before you go smashing your wall down with a sledgehammer, you must first check to see if it’s load-bearing. If you don’t know what this means, let me explain – load-bearing walls are required to provide structural integrity to a home or building. For instance, all the exterior walls of a home are load-bearing and cant be removed unless there’s a new wall to support their load. Along with the exterior walls, there are also interior load-bearing walls as well. In order to determine if the wall you want to tear down is load-bearing, you’ll have to look at the blueprints of your home. If you’re unable to locate them, you should contact a professional architect to ensure it’s safe to take down.

Electrical and Plumping

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell just what’s inside of most walls. There could be electrical wiring, plumbing pipes, gas lines or a number of other hazards. For this reason, you should try to determine what’s behind the wall before you go tearing it down. The blueprints of the homes should contain this information. If you do find electrical or plumbing work behind the wall, you’ll have to hire a professional to come out, remove and re-work the wires and pipes.

Prepping The Rooms

I recommend laying down plastic sheets on both sides of the wall to prevent damage to the flooring or carpet. Also, remove any furniture and other belongings in both of the rooms, as they may inadvertently become damaged in the demolition process.

Demolishing

When you’re reading to tear the wall down, start hammering into the drywall with a sledge hammer. Once you’ve made some large holes, you should be able to pull it off using your hands (wear gloves!) or a crowbar. Continue doing this until you’ve removed the entire side of drywall and then walk to the other room to finish the other side. In order to remove the studs, you’ll have to use a carpenters saw to cut through them.

Now all that’s left to do is cleanup the huge mess you’ve made! Hopefully, you’ve already rented a trash bin where you can toss all of your debris and trash.