[Closed] Brickwork above a wooden kitchen door experts, help needed.

is the door expanding or is the brick work crushing the frame so it no longer fits....

They presumably just built right over the door frame. Is this a thing?

Yep. It's a thing.

It's a thing that dumbass people do.

More often than you would believe possible.

My guess is if you drill upwards through the doorframe you will hit steel.  I'm guessing an L shaped section.  The wall looks thicker than single skin.

It does look thicker I agree, but it's not. Would the L-section be visible from the inside if I chipped some plaster away you think? What if there is no lintel?

is the door expanding or is the brick work crushing the frame so it no longer fits….

It's the door. It's a combo of the door being painted so much that the solid panels below are not able to expand and contract freely in their grooves, and probably that the top and bottom of the door are not painted well.

The top of the door is fine, it's all based around the solid panel, and it has actually 'popped' the tenons in the rails away from the stiles.

Presume the flat roof joists bare the other way? You can get something called a strongback which sits on top of an acro, they are probably about 5mm thick. Looking at it there it doesn't look like theres any support whatsover. You can get a simple L shaped angle for lightweight use but without ringing around I'm not sure what size they go up to. Looking at it you'd require about 1650mm so nearest size would prob be 1800 but like I say not sure they go up to that size.

Swift edit.

Ive just rang my merchant chap and they actually go up to 2.7m so youre well inside. The 1.8m has an upstand of about 110mm so you'll easily fit that in.

So router/chisel out some of the frame in the centre, slip in the strongback from the front 😉 remove frame, remove plaster board to back of wall, grind out/chisel out bed joints from front and rear, carefully ease off strongback to allow lintel to be slipped in to place, pack with slate point up, replaster, fit new door.

500 plus vat for the advice 😉

Yeah you want a strongboy, it is a right angled bracket that sits on top of your acroprop and sticks out like a shelf bracket. It's thin so it will slip under the brickwork. Pretty cheap, we pick ours up from scaffold suppliers, along with acros.

I don't really do brickwork, only stone (trad builder) but the principle is the same. You may or may not find some steel in there, I've seen all sorts of shenanigans as i'm working on very old buildings, 16th to 19th century in the main, so rebar, rough cut logs, chunks of tree or nothing at all is par for the course. They never fall down.

I know a few folk who would take it out without propping. I wouldn't though.

It must be an optical illusion but it looks very like the brickwork above the frame has sagged significantly. Many older buildings had no lintels over the windows, that’s why it can be a drama if you put upvc windows in later as they won’t take the load.

The brickwork is stretcher bond with a block work inner leaf and maybe a 50mm cavity.

Thanks folks. Useful comments.

Chatting to a builder, he suggests that supporting it would be a good idea while switching frames but that being only 3 course of bricks above and given it's lasted 40 odd years or so as is, that I needn't fit a lintel (if in fact there isn't one hiding away in there) but to build a badass frame to go back in, which I will.

He suggested that I could use strongboys, but actually it's a bit more messy to fit them than alternatives in this particular circumstance. Strongboys also need some upward pressure wound in to stay in place and given the low number of courses, this could possibly be an issue.

One option might be to use a stout batten and screw to the face of the lower course middle and sides to offer some support while I switch(eventually I'll be fitting a canopy on there so plug holes will cover), or to screw a plate to the middle and screw a temporary timber prop angled to the floor outside.

A bit of a ghetto version of this...

Both seem workable to me.

Thanks for the advice. Hopefully it'll go smoothly 🙂

"Builder," is it the son of the original "builder" 😉.

If it is cavity then I'd hope/check there's a concrete lintel on the inner leaf as the roof timbers probably bear on to that if that' the run of the joists.

Anyhoo crack on and good luck.

It's not a cavity, it's a single brick. I'll see if I can deduce which way the rafters go.

You haven't said why the frame needs replacing.

I would give it a lick of paint and fit a new door in it.

Nah it's knacked. All the bottoms of the stiles were rotten and I grafted new sections into it years ago now.

Could possibly get away with just replacing the stiles but when I rebuild it, I'm going to add weatherstrip and all that jazz too. Also going to make it open outwards instead of in as it currently does.

🙂