Builder/architect/structural engineer?

[Thinbizzie]

I moved into my house about a year ago, with the intention of changing it around a bit. I would like to take out a chimney breast on the ground floor and first floor (no chimney stack), put in patio doors and remodel the kitchen (completely change the layout, possibly move sink). All this is within the same room. I have a utility room that I am also considering converting to a loo.
Who do I need to speak to about this? A builder? An architect to draw up plans? A structural engineer? Will I need planning permission for any of it? I’ve never done any renovations before and I don’t know where to start!

If there is no chimney stack above the roof line to support then you are just removing material with nothing left to ‘hold up’. Personally, I wouldn’t have thought w you’d need a structural engineer or an architect. A good builder should be ok. And you won’t need planning either for that either. Your biggest problem is finding a good builder they are difficult to find amongst all the cowboys out there these days.

I'd speak to a structural engineer. We had what we were pretty sure were non load bearing walls but as we came to knock them down we wanted to double check and it turned out that a small corner of one of the walls was partially load bearing. Thankfully we have a couple of SE friends but we subsequently went on to have a steel installed. Took longer to organise but didn't cost a great deal more.

Find the builder. They’ll tell you if you need a structural engineer. Don’t use an architect. We wasted tens of thousands on architect plans. Albeit for a much bigger project, but after months of lovey conversations about design aesthetics and whatnot we ended up with plans for a beautiful house that builders then quoted about 4 x our budget to build. In the end we found a great builder who could work with the plans within our budget and had creative ideas about how and what to compromise. But it took us a looooong time to find him! It was through word of mouth