We just bought a house and wanted to remove the walls connecting the kitchen and dining room, but our contractor and architect found some serious issues after opening up the walls and ceilings. It turns out the beams are misaligned, as shown in the linked image, and the joists only terminate at these beams. They told us that while we can replace one wall with a beam, we still need to keep some posts in place, which would force us to shrink our planned kitchen island and limit our storage. We want to know if there's any workaround to remove those red-circled walls, maybe by extending joists or transferring the load differently.
1 Answer
It sounds tricky, but you might be able to use two large beams running from the exterior wall to the staircase wall. Just keep in mind that new posts would typically need to be added from the foundation to support those beams, which can complicate things a bit.
That’s a solid idea, but having two beams that close together could be visually odd. You might want to explore if extending joists to accommodate a single, larger beam could work.
True, those posts would have to rest on proper footings, and you’d likely need engineered plans to make sure everything’s safe and up to code.