How to independently move a doorway in a brick wall

Sometimes it becomes necessary to move the doorway in the interior partition. Usually this process is associated with a change in the interior design of a room or a change in the interior of an apartment..

First of all, it is worth mentioning that a new interior door must be ordered after a new doorway has already been made. This is done because the dimensions of the new doorway, due to any arising reasons, may differ slightly or significantly from the dimensions of the existing door, which will lead to additional repair work to “fit” the doorway to the size of the existing door.

If there is no such possibility or the door is already ready, then all work must be done with the most careful measurement of all the required dimensions.

In order to make a new doorway, we need the following tools:

• saw – “grinder”;
• special disc for working with stone, for the aforementioned saw;
• building level;
• marker pencil;
• construction tape;
• hammer, chisel and screwdriver.

At the beginning of work, by disconnecting the electricity from the work site, remove any electrical wiring and sockets with switches from the place of work..

After the wiring is removed, the contour of the new door is drawn, for this using a building meter, a level and a plumb line. The contour of the future door is applied on both sides of the wall.

After drawing the contour of the future doorway, the desired section of the wall is cut out with a grinder. Sawing is done on both sides of the wall.

Attention! Since the section of the wall to be cut has a fairly large weight, it is necessary to support it on both sides with bars, having previously installed supports under their ends for rigid fixation. Supports can be metal corners or small bars that are securely attached to the wall and floor.

Upon completion of the work on cutting a new doorway, a jumper should be installed. The lintel is installed in order to relieve the load on the door jamb, which may arise due to the pressure of the brickwork on its upper part and lead to damage to the door or even the possible collapse of a section of the wall.

For a lintel, you can use a board or a wooden beam at least 5 centimeters thick, steel corners, and you can also purchase a ready-made reinforced concrete lintel – “pencil”. The main thing is that the lintel to be installed goes inside the wall by at least 7-10 centimeters and that the lintel is the same width as the wall.

Carefully remove 5-6 upper rows of bricks from the sawn section of the wall. In the area that opens on the upper right and upper left sides, we prepare areas for installing a jumper.

Areas for the lintel are prepared as follows: with a drill, through holes are drilled in the upper corners of the doorway. Then, using a hammer and a chisel, pads of the required size are knocked out, necessary for installing a jumper.

The lintel can be installed on cement mortar or polyurethane foam. The horizontal of the lintel is checked with a building level directly during installation.

When installing a door in a doorway of a non-standard rectangular configuration, for example, an arched door, the lintel is made of bent U-shaped steel corners with small “ears” that go inside the wall.

After installing the jumper, we continue to disassemble the sawn section of the wall. We take out the brick carefully, it is assumed that most of the cleaned brick will go to seal the old doorway. The old mortar from the brick is easy enough to clean with a construction trowel or gently tapping the brick surface with a hammer.

When the sawn section of the wall is completely dismantled, and the brick is cleaned and laid — a new door is inserted using a well-known technology: installed in a new doorway, leveled, wedged and fixed with polyurethane foam.

In order to close up the old doorway, we use cleaned bricks. For reference: after cleaning, used bricks are rejected, for a number of reasons, about 10%.

In order to make brickwork, we need a cement mortar, which is obtained by mixing 4 parts of sand and 1 part of dry cement with the addition of water and followed by mixing until a solution of a homogeneous mass and color is obtained..

If possible, for this work, you can use a ready-made lime mortar for plastering with the addition of dry cement to it in the same proportion as described above. It is very convenient to work with such a solution, since it is very plastic.

To seal the old doorway, we need the following tools: a trowel-trowel, a hammer, a nylon cord (20 centimeters longer than the opening to be closed), a building level and a couple of studs.

The carnations, on which the nylon cord is fixed with loops, are driven in on both sides of the closed doorway, to the height of one brick, taking into account the thickness of the mortar joint.

After the first row of brickwork has been passed, everything is repeated in the same way, that is, the carnations are nailed one row higher and all the work is done again.

If the first row of brickwork starts with a whole brick, then the next one starts with half a brick. Thus, the “bandaging” of the brick is carried out, which gives the wall the necessary strength.

A nylon cord – “chalka” is used more in order to maintain an even vertical of the wall section to be sealed, rather than an opening.

After the old doorway is bricked up, it must be allowed to dry for a period of time, which is determined by the finishing material used and with which this section of the wall will be covered. If it is supposed to plaster the embedded area, then 12 hours will be quite enough. And if drywall is used, then the drying of this section of the wall can reach 2-3 weeks, depending on the humidity of the room where these works were performed.