I was wondering if you could use heat to remove the plastic-like finish from these cabinets so you could paint them.
Hello, I was just wondering if we could get rid of these spindles and how to do it. I mainly want to know if this wall appears to be supporting weight and if these spindles are merely ornamental Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing back!.
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You know when you walk into a house and this is what you see? 70’s SPINDLES!!!
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want more details – but hopefully these steps will help you get rid of those ugly 70’s spindles without too much effort or money! Below is the Before/After final picture.
I mentioned to my husband that this was one of those things that required an update because I detest them so much. It turns out that when we first moved in, other remodeling projects took precedence, and these drove me crazy for a few years (haha, yes, YEARS) until one day I walked upstairs by accident and my husband was ripping them out! Hooray! I believe it was during the middle of our extensive kitchen renovation, so I was surprised that we were starting a new project, but I couldn’t have been happier to see these ugly spindles go.
How we did it was surprisingly easy but we had a lot of discussion beforehand about exactly what to do with this awkward half-wall area. See below for the “after” shot – soooo much better! Open, clean, updated.
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Its difficult to see exactly how this is framed, but. The top plate of the wall with spindles appears to be the 2x framing directly beneath your blue line. That wall appears to be supporting attic/ceiling framing members. The parallel members (2×6?) seem to be supporting the spindle wall rather than spanning it. That makes me think that removal of the spindles would require some sort of reinforcement.
You might be able to determine the most effective way to make it work with some more details. You might be able to replace the spindle wall in the attic area with a beam that runs from the 2×12 beam to the subsequent load-bearing wall at the opposite end of the spindle wall. You might be able to frame the perpendicular 2×6 members into the face of the new beam using joist hangers. Everything would have to be built to withstand the proper loads. That is just conceptually how I would approach it. But in order to see the framing more clearly, it is actually necessary. Insulation hides far too much for one to make an informed decision.
In my experience, reputable builders have never utilized spindles like that in load-bearing situations. By doing so, two hinge points along the height of the wall would be created, which would be extremely dangerous.
I’m reasonably confident that the wall isn’t structural given this information, the placement and arrangement of the wall, and the attic situation.
Should you make decisions based on that? Nope. Get someone on site.
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