The concept is great. This is a job for a professional and I would encourage a GC to evaluate. Best wishes!

Absolutely - we will be working with a contractor. Just wanted to see if anyone had feedback or considerations were not thinking of.

"Just wanted to see if anyone had feedback or considerations were not thinking of."

A floor plan would be necessary for this.

Or , a long window ?

If you’re planning a larger renovation soon, I would hold off.

Wait until you find a designer to work with you and your contractor, you migt even need an architect since you are thinking of changing ceilings heights and making a porch a living space . I sure hope you are preapred for the cost of raising a ceiling.Not to mention a kitchen renovation.. IMO if you are going to remove a wall then remove the whole wall those little 1/2 walls are just really a dated idea.

Thank you!!

Here’s a floor plan similar to ours/. We’d cut a hole in the circled red wall.

The kitchen has a lofted ceiling, but the adjacent rooms do not. Knocking down the walls completely would be a much larger project because the hvac/AC system is up there: were not sure we want to do that major of a project (flooring, cabinets, hvac, electrical;, structural).

The wall we would leave is load bearing across the whole house, so we don’t want to touch that wall).

When we get started we’ll have an engineer and so everything to code.

We can’t do a window because the peninsula in the kitchen is not centered on the wall. So from either the living room or the kitchen a window would look off center.

The kitchen is in excellent shape, so doing a big renovation (knocking down all walls, loft ceiling, etc) seems not worth it if were not adding sq footage.

My thought was spending a little now would improve usability of the house rather than doing a huge/major project.

@patricia the peninsula there would prevent us from opening up the wall completely. (Unless we got rid of peninsula but that would be part of a complete overhaul).

One more pic that shows the beams/ceiling heights.

I think the half wall will provide some separation of spaces. I think the whole open concept thing is over done. And frequently poorly done.

@mainenell agreed! To do this right we’d need to loft the ceiling of the whole space (and figure out what to do with AC) and redo flooring, remove the weird peninsula/island we have... which also involves electrical and hvac because there’s an electric heater in the peninsula toe kick... and replace the load bearing wall with a beam ($$). All in that’s a ton of work and money for not adding any Sq footage (and leaving the rest of the kitchen as-is, it’s in excellent condition).

So we’ll see the cost for this smaller project if it’s worth it!

It's not a "small project". The load for that will need to be engineered and transferred with posts and beams down all the way through new foundation piers.

@greendesign I don’t think it’s load bearing because there are no walls below it in the basement, but we are definitely going to get a structural engineer.

For now I was thinking the cutout would help things feel more open before we decide to completely redo the living space (or move).

Even if it's a load bearing wall, you could put a beam in to hold the load. Or, even easier and less expensive, leave a piece of the wall as a support column like this.

@partim yes, that’s def an option thanks for drawing the pic! Our contractor supposed to come soon and get us a quote.

We did this in conjunction with a kitchen remodel. The kitchen was completely closed off from the dining room except for a single door opening. There was nothing in the soffit and the wall wasn’t load bearing so no issues taking it down to a half wall.

I just want to know why you are not removing the wall that opens into the living room rather than the dining room. Seems to me that would give a more open feel. Also could your open up both walls at the top and just leave the center beam?