Most people describe this project the same way: take out the wall between the kitchen and the living room and make it one space. The description is simple. The work underneath it is not, because that wall may be holding up the floor above, part of the roof, or both, and load does not disappear when a wall does. It has to go somewhere else, along a path that someone designed on purpose.
That is why this project starts with an engineer more often than any other kind of remodel. A structural engineer determines what the wall is carrying, sizes the beam that will replace it, specifies the posts at each end, and follows the load down through the floors to whatever is supporting it at the bottom. Everything else, from drywall to flooring to the ceiling detail, sits downstream of getting that part right.
The cost of opening a floor plan is driven almost entirely by what sits above and below the wall. A non-bearing partition is a demolition and patching job. A bearing wall means engineering, a beam sized for the span, posts, and bearing carried all the way down, which sometimes means work in the basement or a new footing poured under a post. Whether the beam can hide in the ceiling or has to drop below it changes both the structural approach and the finish work. Add the reroute of anything living inside the wall, permits and inspections for structural and electrical changes, and the ceiling and flooring transitions afterward.
Usually you cannot tell reliably from inside the room. Interior walls running perpendicular to the joists above are more likely to be carrying something, and walls stacked over a beam or a post in the basement usually are, but exceptions are common, especially in houses that have been remodeled before. On a wall you intend to remove, get an engineer's answer rather than an opinion.
Sometimes. It depends on the span, the load, and how deep the existing floor system is. A shallower engineered beam can occasionally sit flush with the joists, while a long span carrying serious weight may need more depth than the ceiling has to give. If a flush beam matters to you, say so during design, because it can influence which structural solution gets chosen.
For a structural change, yes. Removing a bearing wall and installing a beam is permitted, inspected work, and the inspection generally happens before anything gets covered up. Electrical that has to be rerouted is inspected as well. This is worth doing properly, because unpermitted structural work becomes a problem later, usually at the least convenient moment.
Then it is worth finding out how they did it. Houses that have been opened up before sometimes have beams that were undersized or bearing that never made it down to anything solid. When new work touches that area it gets evaluated, and occasionally the right answer is to correct what was done before as part of the current project.
A whole-home renovation is a sequencing problem before it is a design problem. Systems, structure, and finishes all move at once, and the order they move in decides whether you can stay in the house while it happens.
Learn more →New square footage means foundation, framing, and a roof tie-in, plus an exterior that has to read as one house when it is done. The tie-in and the match are where additions get difficult, not the new room itself.
Learn more →Older houses hold surprises behind the plaster: outdated wiring, undersized panels, galvanized supply lines, framing a previous owner modified. Renovating one well means budgeting for what demo reveals instead of pretending it will not show up.
Learn more →You already own the square footage. Turning a garage, attic, or unfinished bonus space into living area still means insulation, heating and cooling, code review, and structure and systems that were never sized for a room people live in.
Learn more →Describe the house and what you are planning, or call 801-644-9000.
