Walls – What length header should I consider

doorsframingjoistsload-bearingwalls

I have 2 bathroom remodeling we are planning on the 2nd floor of 2 storied house. I want to carve out part of the bathroom as laundry room where Washer (27") and Dryer (27") will be stacked in a closet 31" wide. And there will be 28" wide door to this closet. Look at the picture below. The two walls extending towards the top are closet walls so you can ignore them.

wall along which the door will be installed

The joists are going perpendicular this wall and for almost any location they do not lap over this wall but extend straight to the nearby parallel exterior wall (9 ft away). It sounds like non load bearing wall so far. But I need help to confirm.

Now, I have 2 issues:

  1. In the image, yellow/black are existing door frames in the wall. The left one is entrance to a bedroom and the right one is entrance to the bathroom. The blue one is the opening I want to create. Right above this opening I have 2 pair of joists which are lapping so it definitely makes it load bearing section of the wall. I am wondering why only those 2 joists could be lapping?

  2. I would definitely be putting sistered header above the new door. But I am wondering the 2 other doors being so close to this new opening, should I consider 3 doors together as one big opening and put a longer header to support all the 3 door frames together?

Best Answer

  1. hard to say without knowing more about the floor plan. Maybe they're in a longer section of floor. Maybe there are plumbing fixtures that required a shift in layout. Who knows?

  2. It doesn't much matter whether you use one header or three, but you'll want trimmer studs supporting it or them between each pair of doors. Otherwise you'd need to size the header for the full span, and that would probably call for a LVL beam.