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I have a 1929 house with a granite foundation and solid brick walls. My basement access has a door that is 30″ wide and 6′ wide. I want to expand that to a double door that would be about 60″ wide and about 6’6″ high. I am having a hard time finding anybody in Atlanta who wants to deal with this, they all have bigger fish to fry. I am having a concrete guy do some work also and he said he could cut the opening. Is this something I can do myself? I am fairly handy, but screwing around with the foundation gives me pause.
If he cuts it do I need to install a beam to take the weight? Or is the door small enough that I could just intall one on the hole? Do I need a structural engineer or something to tell me? Thanks
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No, yes (lintel), no, yes.
*Scott,You can have the concrete sub. open up the doorway for you with a breaker. You will have to make the rough openning larger to allow infilling around your new frame. Granite is a bitch to cut using small power tools.The area over the doorway will have to be at least a foot wider than the doorway, to allow enough bearing on the two sides for your header beam.Seeing that you already have a concrete sub on site, you can have him form for a concrete header beam. Leave out a stone higher than the beam to allow concrete to enter the form. Place 4 5/8 rebars the entire width of the beam.Another way to do a header sill is to use two angles and slip them in from each side and then drill through the foundation and bolt them together. You still should have to have a foot longer on each side to bear on.I alway recommend that you have a local engineer look at the structure for an opinion, prior to committing.Gabe