Widening a doorway without replacing the lintel - is there a way?

[SimonD]

One of the bits of my house remaining is a hallway where towards the end we have a doorway that was there with the original house. The hallway is wider than the doorway. 

 

The doorway is in a single skin brick wall right next to a brick pier. The wall is structural in the sense that on top of the wall I have a wall plate upon which there are doubled up bearers of  45 x 175 standing on edge along the top of the wall to which joist hangers are fixed for all the 1st floor flooring. It doesn't take any roof loads but there is a stud wall above. These double bearers span the whole width of the doorway extending to the end of the house in one direction and about 500-750mm the other side. Originally I thought this doorway would be fine but now we've got to plastering stage I've decided it all closes up the doorway too much and it just feels too narrow.

 

The original lintel is a concrete one that I know extends about 200mm into the pier and about 150mm to the other side. It's the other side at 150mm where I need to open out the doorway.

 

I was first wondering if I could use an SE's suggestion of doubled up studs anchored to the wall, but then I don't really gain much although maybe just 50-75mm would make all the difference, who knows.

 

Are there, for example any metal brackets that can be fixed to the wall that would support the lintel?

 

Or is it possible that with the doubled up bearers I might not actually need this lintel any more as this was the old exterior wall holding up a concrete tiled roof?

 

This is probably not that straight forward, but does anyone have any suggestions as I really don't fancy the work required to take out this lintel and replace - and yes, I know I should have thought about it sooner 🙄

 

Thank you!

Edited 10 hours ago by SimonD

[SimonD]

So a little update. I've stripped back the plaster on the other side and it appears this has 200mm bearing also. Am I correct in assuming that a concrete lintel for a doorway under 1000mm will be okay with 100mm bearing each side?

[Nickfromwales]

18 minutes ago, SimonD said:

So a little update. I've stripped back the plaster on the other side and it appears this has 200mm bearing also. Am I correct in assuming that a concrete lintel for a doorway under 1000mm will be okay with 100mm bearing each side?

100mm is fine, as long as what it's on is not crumbling etc.