We have a stairway that goes down to the basement immediately after entering the side doorway of our home. The opening divides much of our small galley kitchen from our living room, as seen in (RED) on the rough illustration.
What we would like to do is remove this existing stairwell, and move the stairwell, making it wider and have it follow the basement wall seen in (BLUE).
We would then remove the pantry, re-joist/create a floor over the old well, remove or shorten the wall separating the kitchen from the living room perhaps adding a longer breakfast bar where the pantry is. This would widen the kitchen and create a more open floor plan. This would also allow us to open up a 1/2 finished basement.
Surprisingly the existing floor joist system actually runs WITH the proposed NEW stairwell plan. Has anyone else done this kind of project and/or what pitfalls would we expect to run into? Thanks in advance!
Merry Christmas