A Beginners Guide to Taking Down Interior Walls

When we first bought our house, the number one project I knew I wanted to tackle, was turning one of the guest bedrooms into a dining room. In our house, the entry way originally opened up to a tight entry, with a bedroom immediately to the left. Since we don’t plan on having kids right away, we don’t need that many bedrooms, and really wanted an open floorplan, where we could see the dining room from the kitchen and living area. This is when I decided that we would go 100% Chip and Jo, and take down both these walls (as well as all the closets in the room!), rip up the carpet, and make it into one big open concept.

To be honest – the whole thing was A LOT easier than I expected. I was able to take down the walls almost completely myself while David put together furniture and put up a shiplap wall in the other room (I’ve never been as proud of myself). It took about two full days on a weekend to take the walls down, and rip up the carpet, and then the next weekend, David laid the new flooring in about six hours. Below, we’re putting a step by step guide, as well as before and after pictures.

1) Have someone that knows what they’re doing make sure that the walls you want to take down aren’t load bearing walls. We had David’s dad – who builds houses take a look at them, to determine if we could take them down without it hurting the rest of the house. (Disclaimer – This step SHOULD NOT BE MISSED. UNLESS YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A FALLING DOWN HOUSE. In that case – do you boo.)

2) Remove all doors, trim, and baseboards with a floatboard (it looks kind of like a crowbar – Home Depot can hook you up).

3) THIS IS THE FUN PART. If you’ve ever wanted to swing a sledgehammer, now’s your chance to go to town. You’ll take a sledgehammer to the drywall, hammering holes, weakening the drywall enough to rip it down.

4) After the drywall is down, it’s time to remove the studs. We chose to remove them in a similar way as we removed the walls. We used the sledgehammer (CAREFULLY), and then when it started to break free, we twisted it, until the nails came out.

After this step, you’ll have a TON of rubble, but an empty room – you’ll be ready to start getting rid of your trash, cleaning, and figuring out what to do with your flooring!