Can you remove a wall to open up your kitchen?

Is my wall load bearing, and how can I tell?

The attic and the crawl space usually give it away, but treat what you find as a strong clue, not a verdict, until someone qualified confirms it. Start in the attic with the ceiling joists. If they run across the wall and end or overlap on top of it, the wall is almost certainly carrying them. If they run parallel to it, it probably is not, although a post or beam above can still land on it.

Under the floor, a wall that sits directly over a girder, a line of piers, or a foundation wall is passing weight down to something. In some older roofs, diagonal braces run from the rafters down to the top of an interior wall, which means it holds up part of the roof as well as the ceiling. In a two-story house, a wall stacked directly under another wall is usually bearing.

Two things the attic will not show you. Some walls also brace the house against sideways forces, such as an earthquake, which is a separate question from the weight they carry and one for an engineer. And in a mid century post and beam house, where the roof rides on beams and posts, a wall that looks like a simple partition can hide a post.

What happens when you remove a load-bearing wall?

The weight gets a new path: a beam across the opening, a post at each end, and a footing under each post. Along the old wall, the load was spread over its whole length. A beam gathers that same load at its two ends, so each post presses down far harder than any stretch of wall did, and whatever sits under the post has to take it. On San Gabriel Valley clay, which swells when wet and shrinks as it dries, the engineer designs those footings for the soil as well as the load.

Shoring needs a solid base too. On a raised wood floor, the temporary walls push down on joists that were never meant to take a concentrated load, so we check what sits under the floor where the shoring lands and add support in the crawl space when it is needed.

• The engineer sizes the beam, posts, footings, and connections, and the drawings go into the permit.
• Temporary shoring walls go up beside the wall to hold the ceiling or the floor above.
• Pipes, wires, and ducts inside the wall are rerouted, and then the framing comes out.
• Where the existing footings are not enough, new ones are dug, and the inspector usually sees them before concrete.
• The beam and posts go in with the specified hardware, and the shoring comes down.
• The framing is inspected before the ceiling and walls are closed.

Flush beam or dropped beam: which should you choose?

Choose a dropped beam if you can live with a beam you can see, and a flush beam if a flat ceiling is worth opening much more of it. A dropped beam hangs below the ceiling, and the joists keep resting on it exactly as they rested on the wall, so only a narrow strip of ceiling is disturbed before the beam is wrapped in drywall or wood.

A flush beam sits up in the ceiling, in line with the joists. Each joist is cut and hung from the beam in a metal hanger, which means opening a wide band of ceiling on both sides. The beam has to fit within the depth of the joists, which often calls for steel or engineered lumber, and when the beam the engineer requires is deeper than the joists, it still drops a little below the ceiling.

In a one-story house there is sometimes a third way: a beam set in the attic above the ceiling joists, with the joists hung from it, which leaves the ceiling flat and mostly intact. Whether the roof framing and attic space allow it is the engineer's call. A dropped beam is not always the compromise it sounds like, either. Cased in stained wood, it can echo the box beams already on the ceilings of some Craftsman dining rooms.

What could be running through the wall?

Anything that travels between the crawl space and the attic can be inside it: drain and vent pipes, water lines, heating and cooling ducts, circuits, and sometimes gas. None of it can simply be cut. A vent has to reach the roof and a drain has to keep its downhill slope, so neither bends easily around a new opening. Ducts need a new route through the attic or under the floor, and gas is rerouted under a permit.

The find that changes plans is a main drain stack, the large vertical pipe that carries waste down from the fixtures and vents up through the roof. Moving one can be a bigger job than the beam, and sometimes the smarter answer is a short return of wall or a column left around it.

When we open a wall in a pre-war house, the wiring inside can be knob-and-tube. It is not automatically illegal, but new work cannot tie into it and it must never end up packed in insulation, so circuits passing through the wall get rewired, not spliced. Most of what a wall holds can be spotted before anyone cuts.

• Look on the roof for a vent pipe directly above the wall.
• Check whether a bathroom, laundry, or sink sits against or above the wall.
• Note any heating register, return grille, or thermostat on either face.
• Count the switches and outlets on both sides, since each circuit has to go somewhere.
• Look in the crawl space and attic for pipes or wires entering the wall.

Do you need a permit and an engineer to take a wall out?

For a load-bearing wall, yes to both. Removal needs a permit and a beam sized by a structural engineer, and the engineer's drawings and calculations are what the city reviews. In Pasadena, a load-bearing wall removal goes through Building & Safety plan check, and the permit should be pulled under your contractor's license rather than yours.

Which counter you go to depends on the address. Altadena is unincorporated Los Angeles County, so its permits go through LA County Public Works, Building & Safety, on the EPIC-LA portal, not through Pasadena. South Pasadena, San Marino, and Arcadia each run their own building departments, which set their own requirements, so check with the right one before the drawings are finished.

Even a non-bearing wall is a framing change, which generally needs a permit, and moving the outlets, switches, or pipes inside it adds electrical or plumbing work that does too. Treat a wall removal permit as likely, and confirm with your city before assuming a small wall is exempt.

How are the floor and ceiling patched where the wall stood?

New boards get woven into the old floor, and the ceiling gets a patch built out to meet the plaster around it. In many older Pasadena houses the oak strip flooring was laid up to each wall, so taking the wall out leaves a bare strip of subfloor between two rooms. A good hardwood floor patch after wall removal pulls old boards at staggered lengths on both sides and laces new ones in, so no straight seam runs across the new room.

Then the whole floor is sanded and refinished, so old and new boards take the finish together; refinishing only the patched strip nearly always shows. Kitchens are often where new flooring was laid over old, so the kitchen side can sit higher than the dining room. Joining them means taking the kitchen down or building the other side up, and that decision belongs before the new floor is chosen.

Old plaster on wood lath is thicker than modern drywall, so we fur a drywall patch out to sit flush, or it shows as a line across the ceiling. Trim needs the same care. The picture rail and baseboard that ran along the old wall now stop short and have to be returned or matched to the existing profile.

What do you give up when the kitchen opens up?

Mostly wall space, quiet, and a door you can close on the dishes. The wall you remove was probably holding upper cabinets or the refrigerator on one side and a sofa or sideboard on the other, and that storage has to go somewhere, usually into an island or into taller cabinets on the walls that remain.

Cooking smells, heat, and noise now reach the living room. If the wall is coming out as part of a kitchen remodel, plan a range hood ducted to the outside together with the beam, not after it, because a flush beam can block the path a duct would have taken through the ceiling. A quiet dishwasher also earns its place once the sofa is a few steps from the sink.

The mess is on display too. Pans on the stove and dishes in the sink are visible from the dining table, which some families enjoy and some come to resent. A pantry cabinet that closes, or a cleanup area tucked out of the main view, can help, and it is worth picturing an ordinary weeknight dinner in the open room before committing to it.

Should a Craftsman or Spanish house go fully open?

Not always. In an older home, a wide cased opening trimmed to match the house often gives most of the light and sightlines of an open concept kitchen, while keeping the room divisions and woodwork that define the style. An open floor plan in a Craftsman can feel out of character, and if the wall holds an original built-in, such as a buffet or a glass-doored pass-through, removing it takes out something that cannot be bought back.

Spanish Colonial Revival houses often have arched openings, and a widened arch usually suits them better than a flat beam. Mid century post and beam houses are the exception, since open plans are native to them.

Interior walls usually fall outside design review in Pasadena landmark districts such as Bungalow Heaven, where review looks at changes visible from the street. The catch is the exterior: if the new layout moves or adds a street-facing window or door, that part can need review before the building permit. Confirm your property's status with the city's planning counter first.