Is your house masonry veneer on the outside? If so, a steel lintel is common to support the brick or stone above. I've rarely seen steel beams used over openings in wood frame construction, though I recently noticed a commercial building under construction that steel beams were installed above the openings, instead of wood headers. I have no idea what they plan to to cover the exterior walls with. It's some kind of small strip center, and I was surprised they are using wood frame construction instead of steel or CMU for the walls.
My house was built in 1940 as listed on my deed.
It's a brick 18 foot wide rowhome with a rear garage below the dining room.
Also, a backyard that can store two cars, and a front yard 30x18 feet wide.
Interesting story:
When remodeling the bathroom back in 2008, behind the bathroom mirror I saw that it was hung over the original wall opening that used to have one of those 1940s built-in flushmount mirror/medicine cabinets.
The kind that had one of those "slots" to dispose of used razor blades, which would fall down inside the wall.
Out of curiosity, a peek down inside the wall I noticed a bunch of old razorblades still there....... along with a crumpled old newspaper!
I got the newspaper out gently, (it's brittle and yellowed) and saw that it was dated Tuesday September 24, 1940!
It must have been shoved in there by whoever was contracted to build my house, because on the sheetrock wall inside there was a note, barely visible written in pencil saying "Tub in this room scratched- "9-19-40" (the original cast iron tub is still there and just fine).
I still have that old newspaper, it's an American Communist publication called
"Daily Worker New York".
It's got the current stories about WW2 in it, one being the German bombing and invasion of Great Britain, local American news, and of course advertisments for things like woman's dresses and 78 RPM records, etc.
Naturally, I went through reading that old newspaper, I was facinated!
Talk about going BACK in time!
THE HOLE IN THE WALL .......
