"its your typical load bearing chimney removal job"That was our joke through this whole job. We said every time we were presented with a challenge that we had never seen before. which seemed to happen about every 10 minutes for the first few days of this job.
It started simply enough, a phone call from a guy who "had a chimney that they wanted removed". There are old chimneys all over Boulder, parts of original heating systems that are now obsolete. We remove them all the time. "The hardest part," I said, "was patching the roof and floor."
Upon looking at chimney, I immediately realized that this chimney, in the center of the main part of the house, was holding up the ridge beam, and therefore the roof. This was going to be more complicated than I originally figured. "we're going to need to consult an engineer, and come up with a way to support the roof when this is gone," I said.
We came up with a creative solution, to support the ridge beam with a pair of micro-lam rafters, with steel collar ties to prevent them from bowing out. The house was originally built around 1900, and the walls were about 2 feet thick, solid stone. This provided a great bearing surface for the rafters.
While we were working on supporting the roof, we began custom building the kitchen cabinets. Custom built was the only option in this tight kitchen, with its out of plumb stone walls and odd angles. In keeping with our philosophy of using all low and zero V.O.C. material, we constructed the boxes out of wheat board, and the face frames, doors and drawers out of solid maple.We insulated the open areas, and wrapped the roof support
structure in drywall. Then we brought in our hardwood floor crew to patch the floor, and re-finish the floors with water-based finish. As this wrapped up, we were able to install our new cabinets. We brought in a paint crew to stain the lower cabinets a cool blue that the homeowners loved. Concrete Counter tops, Stainless Steel Appliances, mosaic glass tiles, and sleek lighting finished the project off. We made this home a beautiful blend of open, sleek contemporary and old world stone.
The Truss system is now an interesting architectural piece in the great room.
You never know when a simple"we need a chimney removed"
will turn in to one of the most interesting projects we ever did.
