Open-Concept Kitchen Remodeling

Opening the wall between kitchen and living space

A lot of Massachusetts houses were built with the kitchen closed off. Capes and colonials from the 1940s through the 1970s often put the kitchen behind a wall with a single doorway, and older homes divided rooms even more. Owners who cook while the kids do homework, or who entertain, often want that wall gone.

Opening it changes how the whole first floor works. Light from the front windows reaches the kitchen, the person cooking can see the rest of the room, and the dining table can sit where it is actually used. It also puts the kitchen on display, so the finish level and layout matter more than they did when the room was hidden.

Sometimes the wall comes out completely. Sometimes the better answer is a wide cased opening or a partial wall with a peninsula. We look at what the house allows and what you want, and we lay out the options honestly.

Opening a kitchen also changes how heat and sound move through the house. The range hood now vents a larger room, a forced-air register or radiator may sit where a cabinet run is planned, and cooking noise carries into the living space. We plan for those effects as part of the layout rather than after the wall is gone.

Finding out what the wall is carrying

Before anyone swings a hammer, we find out whether the wall is load bearing. We look at which direction the floor and ceiling joists run, what sits above the wall on the second floor or in the attic, and what sits below it in the basement. In a Cape, the wall between kitchen and living room often carries ceiling joists and sometimes loads from the second floor. In a colonial, it may support the second floor itself.

Walls carry more than weight. Kitchen walls commonly hide plumbing vents, drain lines from the bathroom above, heating ducts or pipes, and wiring. A vent stack in the middle of a wall you want removed has to be rerouted, and that is part of the plan from the start rather than a discovery during demo.

If the wall carries a load, we will tell you before any demolition starts and explain what it takes to remove it. If it does not, we will show you how we know.

If you want your kitchen opened to the rest of the first floor, call Modern Remodeling at (781) 974-4263.

Beams, posts and the load path to the foundation

Removing a bearing wall means replacing what it did with a beam. The beam can hang below the ceiling as a dropped beam or be set up into the ceiling flush with the joists, which looks cleaner but takes more work and depends on what is above. Long spans may call for an engineered beam, and its size is set by the span and the load it carries.

The beam ends need posts, and the posts need something solid under them all the way down. That means checking the basement or crawlspace under each post location and adding blocking, a new post or a footing where the existing structure falls short. Footings in Massachusetts go below frost depth, commonly about four feet, and an old fieldstone foundation wall may need its own attention before it takes a new point load.

During the work, temporary shoring walls hold up the ceiling on both sides while the old wall comes out and the beam goes in. Nothing is removed until the shoring is in place and checked.

Permits and structural work under the Construction Supervisor License

Removing a bearing wall is structural work, and in Massachusetts it needs a building permit through your town or city building department under 780 CMR. Steve holds an unrestricted Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License, which is the state license for supervising structural work on one- and two-family homes.

The building department may ask for beam sizing documentation with the permit application, and inspectors look at the framing while it is still exposed. Any plumbing, gas or electrical rerouted out of the wall is permitted and inspected separately through the licensed trades who perform it.

We handle the permit application, schedule the inspections and keep the framing open until it is signed off. Skipping this step can cause trouble when you sell the house, and it throws away the second set of eyes an inspection provides.

If you live in a historic district, interior work like this generally does not come before the local commission, since those reviews deal with exterior changes. If the project also involves a new window or door on the outside of the house, we will tell you early whether that review applies.

Patching floors, ceilings and the seams where the wall stood

When a wall comes out, it leaves a strip of missing floor and ceiling. The floors on each side were often installed separately, at slightly different heights, running different directions, or in different materials. Hardwood may need weaving in with matching boards, and sometimes refinishing or replacing the floor across the whole open area gives a better result than a patch.

Ceilings need the same care. Plaster ceilings in older houses rarely line up perfectly on either side of a wall, and a patch that shows a ridge under raking light looks worse than the wall did. We repair or skim the ceiling so the line disappears, and plan lighting for the new combined space instead of keeping two separate rooms of fixtures.

Dust control matters more on this job than on most, because the work happens in the middle of the main floor. We seal off the work area, protect the rooms around it and run cleanup daily. In homes built before 1978, plaster and trim may carry lead paint, and the wall comes out under lead-safe work practices.

If you want your kitchen opened to the rest of the first floor, call Modern Remodeling at (781) 974-4263. We work within about a hundred miles of Raynham, and every open-concept project starts with a walkthrough that looks above and below the wall as well as at it.

See the rest of our kitchens work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.