Greetings all,

I got a question for all you construction wizards out there.

In the basement where the theater will be, there is a support pole and beam holding up the wall/floor upstairs. The beam, sadly enough, is kind of in an odd place. On the attached ridiculously lame diagram of the layout, its the small little square in the home theatre area. What I would like to do is move it (if possible) to where the X is, just over a bit. There is a beam that runs across the ceiling from/to the two little circles that I added. My question is .. can I move the support beam to the X and then take out the existing beam and add another one for more support? Again, where that beam is, is carries the load of the end of the wall upstairs (separating the living room/family room and the hallway).

When the time comes, I will bring in a structural engineer for options, but I was just curious to know some opinions ahead of time.

Thanks a ton all.

LG

PS. I dont post very often but MAN, I read here a lot. Some of you guys/gals are absolutely fountains of information. Its a great community.

pictures we need pictures man :)

Photobucket.com is your friend

Pictures and call that engineer. I had to bring one in on one of my diy projects. He straightened us all out on opening up a room. We would have been in big trouble if we did what we wanted to do with a support wall. We have yet to start that pha$e.

Mike

www.tedwhite.homestead.com the trial and tribulation...

It's a pain but it can be done if you are willing to throw enough money at it. It will run you a few hundred dollars to bring in an engineer to do the calculations and draw up the plans.

Sorry for the delay in responding. There was a child related "incident."

Anywho, my apologies for not attaching the picture before.

Here ya go. Its not exactly to scale but the dimensions are right.

So yeah .. where the pole is, Id like to move it over about 3ft so its in line with the 5ft wall of the home theatre area. It will also make a nice small computer area.

The solid line behind the stairs is a wall. The dotted line is where Id like to move that wall to. Its not a load handing wall (except for the two corners where the stair alcove is .. which will be staying). The back area is just wasted space/laundry area/furnace. Moving that wall back still gives plenty of room for the laundry area and access to the furnace ... and gains almost 5 extra feet for the main room of the basement.

What do you all think?