Treeskate- The first place would be your town hall to speak to the building inspector. If you bump out your house, chances are they will want to approve it and be sure its not to close to the neighbors, septic or wells if you have them, etc etc. If your asking more about the general movement of an exterior wall my advice would be to get someone with a lot of experience to help plan this so you are sure roof lines are supported, etc etc. When I did this for my kitchen I left the existing wall as is for as long as possible-poured the foundation (or soni tubes) framed the new section and only then break through from the existing space. Better than leaving the house with a big hole in in for a few months.

We removed the same type of "old exterior wall" when we expanded our living space a couple of years ago. I think you're going to find a couple of things: 1. This is going to require building permits. 2. Is that brick wall also holding up your roof? In our house, it was. The roof/ceiling is going to have to be supported. In our house, the temporary support was put in place before we broke into the ceiling and wall. 3. We didn't have a way to see how all the wall and roof framing was intertwined until we took the brick wall down. Because of how our house was built, we had to get a structural engineer involved at this stage because he had to design the best solution to keep the roof in place, and to meet the folks in the building permit department. We found alot of half-a..ed construction techniques used in the addition and they also had to be fixed. Have you gotten up into your attic to see if you can see anything from above? I would definitely not assume that you can simply remove the brick and voila! have a new room.

Thank you Daisy and Cleo. I tried to google “forced to bring insulation up to code” and nothing shows up. I can’t find one person on a forum that says that the building department forced them to tear down wall and insulate. I would think if this would have happened to someone, she/he would have posted somewhere... I read a lot of stories about people going broke to meet requirements from the town but not from insulation. I think the only way to know for sure is to call the building department. A lot of people told me to say as little as possible to inspectors in general but I know the one from my town is highly respected as someone that is fair, reasonable and very helpful. I am the only French person living in the town so even on the phone my identity is pretty obvious right away because of my accent. I will definitely keep you posted. Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and for the support.

If you turn off the breaker that feeds the electricity to those fixtures, you don't have to worry about electrocuting yourself. Just be sure to rewire correctly to prevent fires. Black to brass, white to bright(silver), and ground (bare copper) to green. When tightening the marrettes, make sure both wires are securely attached.