Increasing width of garage door opening

[kbuhagiar]

Hello GJ nation,

I have an 8-foot garage door on the basement floor of my single-story ranch-style house:

I am considering (if possible) replacing the door and widening the opening to 9 or 10 feet. I can fit three cars in this basement space, and the additional door width would provide extra room for maneuvering the vehicles.

I have pictures of the house under construction:

I am trying to determine how difficult a task this would be.

Based on the pictures, can it be determined if the narrow wall adjacent to the door appears to be load bearing? Are garage door openings restricted to 8 feet if under a second story (in this case, our master bedroom)? If not, would it be as simple as re-framing the existing opening to accommodate the wider door?

Thanks in advance!

 

[rsanter]

Won't be that bad.

Remove the interior drywall around the opening

You need to jack the ceiling up just a little and install a temporary support wall right behind the exsisting garage door.

Remove the old beam and part of the wall where you want to expand.

Install the new beam and the framed opening on the one side ( I am assuming by the look you will expand the width in the one direction)

Once all the new framing is complete you can remove the temp wall, fix the drywall, fix the outer sheathing and install the new garage door.

For a crew of 2-3 guys that will be completed in a day less the finish work on the drywall

Bob

 

[matt_i]

My view is that the wall over the garage door holds a good bit of load, upper wall, and presumably half of the roof load.

It looks like the floor joists run parallel to the wall face with the garage door in it, so holding up the upper wall with a temp wall on the first joist back isn't going to be a lot of support.

I would place 3-4 basement screw-jacks under the first joist back from the wall, nail joist hangers to the face of it, and then run temporary framing out perpendicular above the garage door and build the temp wall on the outside. Tension those beams in an upward direction with wedges under the top of the temp wall to put some resistance back into the structure and take up clearance.

At that point I'd feel confident to take out the jack studs and put in a new LVL header (of appropriate size).

The pictures show a single jack stud (I think...) I don't think that's enough. 2 min with 3 better would be my choice.