Cost to knock down wall? Where to begin?

[Schoolzie101]

We moved into our house in December and have already ripped out the kitchen and utility room, and redoing this. I have posted previously re what to do with the house and loved everyone's suggestions but the cost of modifying the rooms at the back of the house/knocking down the kitchen extension and rebuilding would have been way way over our budget. As such, we are working with what the rooms currently are and improving room by room.

One idea I've had tonight, is to knock the wall down between the living room and dining room to open it up to one big room. Has anyone had this done recently/done this themselves, and if so how much did this cost?

If I were you I'd stop knocking stuff around until you've worked out how you want to use the house. Just doing things willy nilly will really cost in the long run.

Do you need a massive open space? Lots of People are turning their back on enormous living spaces and keeping them as smaller, more flexible ones.

I know I sound like a bore, but I'd honestly spend a bit more time planning. You will likely find the renovations you're already doing are more expensive than you expect.

I honestly don’t see the benefit of that over knocking down a wall to better combine the kitchen, sunroom and dining room. I have teens/ preteens and the benefits of separate smaller reception rooms is huge.

in terms of doing it yourself, if it’s not a load bearing wall I guess you could DIY but I’d probably not risk it in case it has structural ramifications. If it’s a load bearing wall do not DIY as you’ll need reinforcing beams etc.

Thanks both. Currently the "dining room" is just a bit dark as it's between two rooms, and the sun room gets most of the light at the back of the house.
Happy to be persuaded otherwise but just think it would be a better use of space for us as a family to open it up rather than have the two rooms separate (as currently we barely set foot in the dining room, and I don't really see this changing)

You will end up with a long thin room and will end up with dead space. You could put a partial fake wall in and then insert sliding doors in the gap between the fake wall and the current wall to open up the space when needed.

So, if you knock the wall down, you will end up with a long toom that's dark at one end. Where do you eat at the moment? How would you place your furniture so it works? When you or your kids have friends around, where do you congregate? One big space for socialising can be really noisy.
I'd just knock a double door space between the two, with sliding doors, it is far more flexible.

Get Kirsty in…!

Having had a bit of time I'm still back and forth between knocking the wall completely down or doing the double doors so we still have the option in the future to use as 2 rooms again. I'm more leaning towards knocking it down completely and having one big room, many of our family members have their living room/dining room and I really like it.

It will not be staying as it is as 2 rooms - it just does not work with our family.

So, where to begin? Builder or a Structural Engineer?

That's probably load bearing too, if the bits on the back are additions. You'll likely need an RSJ, unless you're skilled in DIY you'll not see much change from £1k in labour costs alone. You'll end up with a dark corridor, which won't be used. Alrhough if that's an external wall, you could put a window in. Then also it's a bit odd having two fireplaces, so take one of the chimneys down. It soon adds up.

We had to load baring walls taken out at seperate times. 2-3m long sections with steel. About 1200 each inc patching/plastering afterwards. We are south east.

If you do it yourself there is no cost apart from making good, re-plastering the damaged area of walls and ceiling and re-decorating, we've knocked down a few wall over the years! Make sure it isn't a load bearing wall first, you don't want to bring the house down. You may also find the plaster doesn't line up exactly on the two sides, so may need a bit of smoothing between them. And you have to get rid of the rubble, you may be able to take it to your local tip gradually for free or it's a skip. If you are handy you can do the smallish areas of plastering yourself. And expect a lot of dust when you knock it down, get some dust masks.

If it is a load bearing wall you need a beam to support upstairs and structural calculations for the size of the beam so best to get a builder in.

Thanks @Bumblebeeinatree very useful. We are onto our 2nd system in 4 months so know who we will be using : )

Re to posters saying it will be dark - I am hoping not as the bay windows at the front and the sun room /conservatory at the back have massive windows into the dining room (for some reason!) there's 2 4 ft ish windows with one large (probably 6ft) window in the middle.

Re checking if it's load bearing - is this a Builder we need to get in or Structurla engineer?

@Luckydog7 thank you, that's really useful! we are also south

Is there a wall above it? Are the floor joists above perpendicular? If so, it’s likely to be load-bearing. I would get someone competent to assess.

thank you, all clear to check whether the wall is load bearing ,we will definitely do this .

so, who do i contact in the first instance - a Builder or Structural Engineer?

I wouldn’t bother with an engineer until you know the wall is load bearing. If it is, building control will want calculations and a design from the engineer.

You need a structural engineer to prepare a report. They will come out to your house and advise which of the walls you're interested in are structural then do a calculation and provide you with the technical details of the support needed for whichever wall you decide to knock out. You can then ask builders for quotes to remove the wall based on the structural engineer's spec.

You also need building regs for removing structural walls which is a few hundred quid on top but needs to be organized before you start the building work as they visit before, during and after (we paid a private contractor rather than using the council ones as more flexible on timings).

Some building or renovation firms might do the whole lot for you with one payment to the builder to cover everything but we found it hard to get builders out to quote before we had the structural engineer report as it showed we were committed to doing the work and not wasting their time.

We've recently done a simple kitchen diner knock through in the North and the cost of a structural engineer home visit and report on 3 walls including the calculation and technical details to support removal of one structural wall was £450.

Cost of the building work is hard to estimate as we paid our builder to do a wider project including fitting the kitchen and a new boiler.

It's not dissimilar to my Dad's house and he took down the wall between the sun room and dining room - well, most of it. In it's place he put folding semi-glass doors so that they let the light through to the darker room and can be opened right out to treat it all like one big room.

Just an idea.