upstairs door in Victoria's cottage

[cciders]

We are building our version of VC.  We have had to modify some things.  Anyway, we want to frame a door in the bedroom to a balcony.  We are not sure how to support the threshold in the balloon style framing.  It ends up above the placement of window and the front door.  It's a 3' door, in the center of the upstairs outside wall.  Help.

[cciders]

Well, here is what we did.  We went ahead and expanded the header of the living room window, so that it came under the upstairs door (we also increased the size of the header).  We are adding extra cripple studs underneath it.  Now just trying to find enough people to get it up!

[John Raabe]

That sounds like a reasonable solution. You could make this all tie together a bit better with the exterior sheathing as well. Use a large sheet of plywood or OSB that spans over both sides of the door and then glue and nail it well to the studs, plates and header. That will make the whole thing work as a big glued up box beam. Try and avoid having the sheathing joints where the plates are cut out for the door.