How do I take down a stud wall?

Taking out a partition is one of the most transformative small jobs in a house and one of the easiest to get badly wrong, because two of the important questions are invisible: what the wall is holding up, and what is running inside it. Both are answered before any board comes off, not during.

Safety

What you'll need

• Cable and pipe detector
• Pry bar, claw hammer and a reciprocating or hand saw
• P3 mask, goggles and gloves
• Dust sheets, plastic sheeting and tape
• Rubble sacks
• Timber, board and jointing materials for making good
• An electrician, if any cable has to be altered

Step by step

1. Work out what is above the wall.Go into the loft or lift a floorboard above. Joists bearing onto the wall's head plate, a wall directly above it, or a roof strut landing on it all mean it is doing structural work. A partition running parallel to the joists above with nothing bearing on it is more likely non-structural — but that is an indication, not a conclusion.
2. Get a structural opinion if there is any doubt at all.This is the cheapest professional advice in construction and it is definitive. Removing a load-bearing wall requires a beam, sized by calculation, with proper bearings, and it is building control work.
3. Find the services before you open anything.Scan the whole wall. Look at what is on it and near it — sockets, switches, a radiator, a light above, a thermostat. Then remember that a cable inside this wall may be feeding something in a completely different room.
4. Isolate everything you can identify, and prove it dead.At the consumer unit, not at the switch. If you are not confident about proving a circuit dead, this is where the electrician comes in, and it is not an unreasonable call-out.
5. Open the wall up carefully before demolishing it.Take the board off one side by hand, cutting and levering rather than swinging anything, so you can see exactly what is in the void before it is destroyed. This is the step that prevents cutting a live cable or a pipe.
6. Deal with the services properly.A cable that simply passes through the wall can be re-routed. A cable that terminates in the wall has to be made dead at its source or re-terminated in an accessible enclosure — never cut and buried. Pipework needs draining down and capping or re-routing. Both are jobs with rules.
7. Sheet and seal the room.Plastic over the doorway, sheets on the floor, and a plan for getting the debris out. Even a small partition produces a surprising volume.
8. Strip the board from both faces.Lever it off in large pieces from a corner, bagging as you go. Board comes off far faster than it goes on, and it is worth keeping large offcuts for patching elsewhere.
9. Remove the frame in order.Noggins first, then studs — cut them near the middle and twist each half free of the plate, which is much easier than trying to lever a full-length stud out. Then the head plate, then the end studs, then the sole plate.
10. Pull every nail and screw.From the floor, the ceiling and the adjoining walls. They will otherwise catch a floor covering, prevent a board sitting flat, or find a hand.
11. Make good the ceiling.There will be a band of damaged or missing plaster where the head plate was. Cut back to a clean line, fit a strip of board of the right thickness fixed to the joists or to noggins, scrim every joint, and fill or skim across.
12. Make good the walls at each end.The same problem vertically. Cut back, patch, scrim and finish. On a masonry wall the scar may need a backing coat to make up the depth.
13. Make good the floor.A gap where the sole plate was, and often unfinished floor beneath it because it was never seen. Piece in boards or a strip of the same material, or fill and level if a floor covering is going over it.

Tips

• Take the skirting off in one piece before you start if you want to reuse it, and label the pieces.
• The line where the wall was will show in the finished ceiling for years if the patch is not scrimmed and feathered widely. It is worth taking the skim well out on both sides.
• Removing a wall often reveals that the floor finish, the ceiling height or the plaster differ between the two rooms. Look for that before you commit, because levelling a floor across the join can be a bigger job than the wall.
• A reciprocating saw makes short work of studs but will find cables and pipes just as fast. Only use it once the wall is open and you have seen what is inside.

Common mistakes

• Assuming a timber wall is not load-bearing — It is a very common and expensive error. Timber partitions carry floors, ceilings and roof members in many houses.
• Demolishing the wall to find out what is in it — A cut cable is a shock hazard and a repair; a cut pipe is a flood. Open the board off gently and look first.
• Cutting a cable and burying the ends — Any connection has to remain accessible, and a buried live end is a hazard for the next person who opens that ceiling or floor.
• Not scrimming the ceiling patch — The line of the old wall reappears as a crack across the ceiling within a year, and it is the first thing anyone notices.

Questions people ask