Don Young wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

Funny what you think of when you live alone - does this sound insane
or something worth exploring ?

I have a room that was added on to the back of my house. It's about
18 x 28 (feet) - a big whopping room. The outside of the room is
brick, with 2x4 framing inside the brick. Across the shorter
dimension of the room are 18' long 2x8's, 26" on center. There's a
normal shingled roof over top, it's sort of a shallow pitch.

What are the odds I can remove all the ceiling joists and open up the
room to have a cathedral ceiling ? Without everything falling down
that is !

The roof ridge runs parallel to the ceiling joists. The picture
below, if you looking at it in courier font, shows the idea.

I don't plan on rippint out joists without having a licensed engineer
look at it, but people on this group have good ideas and if this is
totally idiotic I will shelf it. It would give a little more zip to a
very boring ranch house and the ceiling in the room is these cheesey
old acoustical tiles that have to be replaced anyway...


=======================================
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| garage | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
=====================| -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
| laundry | -- joist -- |
| | -- joist -- |
=================== =========
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
rest of house |
|
|
|
|
|


I am not sure of your construction but ceiling joists commonly tie the walls
together so that the pressure of the rafters does not push them apart and
collapse everything. I have seen this happen where an amateur builder was
going to install the ceiling joists after he built the roof.

Don Young



Hi,
Structural engineering according to law of physics. Any thing is
possible if $$ is no objection, LOL!