Making a bonus room?

[stealth]

Gents,

I am looking at making a bonus room in my house. Now the thing is my house layout/design usually comes with a bonus room 95% of the time. But the builder decided to make it a bedroom.

In this picture you will see the bonus room up top. On the ledge mine is fully walled on stairs side and the side facing the bottom level.

http://i.imgur.com/HmDULUk.jpg

I am wondering if it would be an issue for me to remove that wall and have railing go around like in the picture above?

Here is a different house with the same layout, just mine is an enclosed bedroom:

http://i.imgur.com/AAAOQIT.jpg

I don't think it would have a load bearing wall, but I don't want to cut up the wall to find out, and I am not sure if I can tell from the attic.

Any help is appreciated.

[OU812]

If its a bedroom your going to have electrical and media cables in the walls. Maybe even some HVAC stuff.

Can you talk to builder and get framing prints with/without walls sometime framing changes and sometimes it doesn't re load bearing walls.

[stealth]

Ya ill either leave it with a drywall ledge, or I will remove the electrical and HVAC.

I can try to contact them, but I am not sure if they will give me the prints for free.

[jeffh]

I doubt there is any HVAC/ducting in that wall.

[FixedGear]

It's not going to be load bearing, there's no way they would change the roof trusses just because the buyer requested a couple of extra walls be put up.

[stealth]

I guess I will make a hole towards the top of the wall and stick a camera in to see if it is load bearing. Just like you guys I don't think it is.

I am the first owner (spec house), but for whatever reason they made it into a room.

[macman64]

Originally posted by FixedGear
It's not going to be load bearing, there's no way they would change the roof trusses just because the buyer requested a couple of extra walls be put up.

It could be the other way around. If the wall was supposed to be load bearing in the original design it could be very expensive to remove the wall as an "upgrade".

[stealth]

I find it very unlikely thats the case. Honestly the only house I seen with this setup is mine. All the other houses I seen have it opened up.

[jeffh]

Ya, selling it with an extra bedroom instead of a bonus room, should demand a higher sale price. Makes sense for a home builder to build a spec home like that. Hope you can get someone to match the railings.

[stealth]

Yea that's another factor I have to consider. Either find the same railings, or make it a half (blow half) wall.

[jwslam]

Originally posted by stealth
Yea that's another factor I have to consider. Either find the same railings, or make it a half (blow half) wall.
Also note how the ceiling will be matched. I saw a place where they had blownout the wall, but then the ceilings were off by maybe 0.5cm of each other and you could see the patchwork was very shotty.

[stealth]

Yea I thought about that. I would get someone in who knows what they are doing to finish that off.

[Hounddog]

Will there be any need to patch in flooring? I'm thinking of the wall that has the door in it?

[stealth]

The upstairs has carpet, and will be changed to hardwood, the only portions that might need "patching" would be the place where the walls are, as the banisters probably have a smaller base plate, that would include a small portion of the door.