Kitchen Remodel Ideas for fixer upper HomeImprovement

I'm very excited to move into my first home. I don't get the keys until next week, but I'm very eager to get started. It's a fixer upper and I plan on doing most of the work myself with help from my family. My dad and uncle have some construction background which will come in handy once the plans are in place.

Picture of the kitchen: http://ift.tt/1AQhpiG

View from the living room: http://ift.tt/1vdQ59a

The first thing I plan on doing is remodeling the kitchen. I plan on completing gutting it and putting in new cabinets, appliances, and countertops. It's a fairly small kitchen and I would like to open it up a bit by sacrificing some cabinet space and removing the upper half of the wall between the living room and kitchen.

Wall to be removed (view1):http://ift.tt/1AQhpyY

Wall to be removed (view2):http://ift.tt/1vdQ3hz

The problem I see with removing the wall between the kitchen and the living room is it's a load bearing wall.

Here's where I think the load points are located: http://ift.tt/1vdQ3hF

My plan is to move the load points into a new wall next to the refrigerator. This will be done by extending the beam to the new wall and create a cross beam connection from the beam the goes across the kitchen.

New wall location (with blue oval): http://ift.tt/1AQhmU2

New extended beam and cross beam connection (view1): http://ift.tt/1vdQ3hO

New extended beam and cross beam connection (view2):http://ift.tt/1vdQ3y5

Before going forward with this I will plan on getting a professional opinion on the remodel, but the anticipation is killing me while I sit in my office! So what do you think? Will the cross beam support the load points? If not, my other option is to remove the wall but keep the load points in place...not as visually gratifying, but it will help open up the kitchen.

tldr; Buying a new house. gutting the kitchen. Want to replace a load bearing wall. My rough (mspaint) proposal included. What do you think?

Submitted November 26, 2014 at 03:55AM by strogginoff http://ift.tt/1AQhpz9 HomeImprovement