You can remove almost any load-bearing wall in a house. What you cannot do is remove it cheaply or quietly. In Los Angeles the work typically runs $10,000 to $25,000 on a single-storey house on a raised foundation, and $25,000 to $60,000 or more once steel, a second storey or new footings come into it. In the City of Los Angeles it needs a building permit with structural plans and calculations stamped by a California-licensed engineer or architect, a beam sized for the span, posts at each end, and usually new footings under those posts. It does not qualify for an express permit. The part most homeowners never hear about until plan check is that a wall can carry no roof load at all and still be structurally essential, because in a seismic zone it may be holding the house sideways. Green Design and Build is a licensed general contractor (CSLB #1110975) based in Van Nuys, and opening the wall between the kitchen and the dining room is one of the remodels we are asked for most across the San Fernando Valley.
We are led by Dekel Sofer; the company has completed hundreds of projects and holds a 4.7-star rating across 146 reviews on Yelp. The permit detail below is City of Los Angeles; every other city in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties adopts the same state codes with its own administration, so confirm the process with your building department.
How to tell whether a wall is load-bearing
You cannot tell from the painted side. What you can do is collect evidence, and there is a lot of it available from an attic hatch and a crawlspace.
| What you see | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| Ceiling joists or rafters run perpendicular to the wall and their ends land on it | Bearing. This is the classic case |
| The wall runs parallel to the joists, but the joists directly under it are doubled or solid-blocked | Bearing. Framers double joists under a parallel wall precisely because it carries load |
| A double top plate on the wall | Suggestive, not proof. Code caps bearing partitions with a double top plate, but single-plate construction is also permitted |
| The wall sits directly above a girder, an interior footing, or a wall on the storey below | Bearing. There is a continuous load path down to a footing for a reason |
| There is a wall in the same position on the floor above | Bearing, regardless of which way the joists run |
| The attic shows stick-framed rafters with ceiling joists | Often bearing. Rafters usually need an interior bearing wall or a purlin and strut line |
| The attic shows engineered trusses spanning wall to wall | Often not bearing for gravity, but see the warning below |
| A post, a girder end, or a header from an opening above lands at one point on the wall | A point load. The wall can be non-bearing along its length and still carry a concentrated load at one spot |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
Two cautions about trusses, because this is where do-it-yourself reasoning most often goes wrong. A truss roof usually does make interior walls non-bearing for gravity, but the wall may still be a required lateral brace point for the trusses. And the trusses themselves are off limits: the residential code forbids cutting, notching, drilling or splicing a truss member without the approval of a registered design professional, so a plan that involves trimming a truss to make room for anything is not a plan.
What a homeowner genuinely cannot determine: whether a strut line lands on the wall, how much a point load actually carries, whether the floor framing below can take a concentrated post reaction, whether the existing footing is adequate, and whether the wall is doing lateral work. In the older Los Angeles housing stock the framing frequently does not match the drawings, where drawings exist at all. This is why we do not price a wall removal until we have been in the attic and looked at the framing, and why the engineer’s calculations have to reflect what is actually there rather than what should be.
The wall may be holding the house sideways, not up
This is the California-specific point that almost no article on this subject makes, and it is the one that most often changes the budget.
Houses resist earthquake and wind forces through braced wall lines: straight lines through the building plan made up of braced wall panels, full-height sections of wall built to resist in-plane shear through the interaction of framing, sheathing and anchors. A wall can carry no roof or floor load whatsoever and still be a required braced wall panel. Remove it and you have removed lateral capacity that has to be put back somewhere.
Los Angeles sits in a high seismic design category, and the bracing demands are correspondingly heavy. LADBS’s own prescriptive wood-framing provisions cap braced wall lines at 25 feet apart, require hold-downs of at least 1,800 pounds at panel ends, and permit no penetrations at all in a braced wall panel. In the highest category, a 20-foot braced wall line can require 16 feet of gypsum or plaster bracing, or 5 feet of wood structural panel. When the wall you want gone is the only braced element on its axis, the replacement is not a beam. It is an engineered lateral system.
The usual replacements, in rough order of cost: additional or upgraded shear panels elsewhere on the same wall line, which is often the cheapest fix and simply means re-sheathing another wall; prefabricated portal frames or narrow proprietary shear panels at the opening; or a steel special moment frame, which is what you use when the opening is close to the full width of the wall. All three need hold-downs and usually new or enlarged footings, and all three need collectors, the framing that drags load from the removed wall’s tributary area across to whatever is replacing it. Collectors are the item homeowners never anticipate, and they frequently mean opening ceilings well beyond the wall itself.
Hillside houses get another layer. For a house built on or into a slope steeper than one in three, the municipal code prohibits wood structural panel sheathing, cement plaster and lath, gypsum wallboard and tension-only braced frames from resisting seismic forces below the base level diaphragm in the downhill direction, and requires that lateral anchorage be symmetrical. On a hillside lot the lateral replacement stops being a framing problem and becomes a steel and foundation problem.
What replaces the wall
The chain has three links, and the price of the job is decided by how hard each one is on your house.
LVL, steel or flush: which beam, and what it does to the cost
| Beam | Where it fits | Cost direction | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built-up dimensional lumber (2x10s or 2x12s nailed together) | Short spans, light roof loads, single story | Lowest | Deep for what it carries; often not enough for spans over 8–10 ft under a tile roof |
| LVL or PSL (laminated veneer or parallel strand lumber) | Most single-story Valley and Orange County kitchens, spans to about 16 ft | Low to mid | Shallower than sawn lumber for the same load; hand-carried and cut on site |
| Glulam | Larger or exposed spans | Mid | Can be left exposed and stained; heavier to set |
| Steel wide-flange | Long spans, two-story loads, flush installs with limited ceiling depth | Highest | Needs a crane or a crew to set, welded or bolted connections, and wood nailers to receive joists; fabricated off site |
| Flitch beam (steel plate between lumber) | Where steel capacity is needed but a crane is not possible | Mid to high | Bolted on site; heavy but hand-portable in pieces |
Dropped or flush matters as much as the material. A dropped beam hangs below the ceiling and the joists rest on top of it: simplest, cheapest, and it leaves a soffit across the opening. A flush beam sits inside the ceiling depth, so every joist has to be cut and hung on hangers, which means shoring on both sides at once and, for any real span, steel or a deep LVL to carry the load within the joist depth. Flush is the clean ceiling most people picture in an open-plan kitchen; budget for it being the more expensive version of the same wall. Under a clay or concrete tile roof, which weighs several times what composition shingle does, the beam and the posts get sized for that dead load, and that alone can move a job from LVL to steel.
Point loads, posts and footings: slab versus raised foundation
The wall spread the load across its whole length. The beam collects it into two points, and what is under those points decides a large part of the cost. On a raised foundation, which is most 1950s to 1970s San Fernando Valley houses and older homes across Los Angeles County, the post usually lands on an existing girder or gets a new concrete pier in the crawl space; the work is dirty but cheap. On a slab, which is most of Orange County, Corona, Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, the engineer specifies a pad footing under each post, and the crew saw-cuts the slab, digs, sets rebar, pours and patches. Where the post can be placed on an exterior wall, it often lands on the existing perimeter footing and no new concrete is needed; the engineer decides that, not the carpenter. With a second story above, the load path has to be traced from the roof through both floors to the ground, and hold-downs and straps are usually part of the drawing.
Everything the wall was hiding
Electrical circuits are rerouted easily enough. Water supply is not much worse. The two that change the price are the drain-waste-vent stack and the heating system. A vent stack rises vertically and terminates through the roof, so it cannot simply be turned sideways. If the wall you are removing is the wall your kitchen or bathroom vents through, the options are a new vent path through a remaining wall up to the roof, which means attic and roof work, or an island vent, which the plumbing code allows but regulates tightly: a return vent rising to drainboard height and coming back down to the drain, a foot vent taken off below the floor and run to open air through the nearest partition, an accessible cleanout, and minimum slope. If neither is geometrically possible, the opening has to move or shrink. A wall that doubles as a duct chase or a return-air path is the same story in a different trade, and losing a return can leave a system starved. Gas piping in the wall has to be re-run, pressure-tested and inspected.
Permits and plan check in Los Angeles
A permit is required. The municipal code’s list of exempt work covers flagpoles, painting, low fences and similar; structural alteration is not on it, and there is no version of this job that is legal without a permit.
It cannot go through an express permit. LADBS’s express permit bulletin lists a residential kitchen or bathroom remodel only with the explicit qualifier “no structural changes”. It does not, however, automatically mean the longest queue either: LADBS’s counter plan check lists alteration to a single-family dwelling or duplex as an eligible category, reviewed the same day in roughly 45 to 60 minutes. Whether a given job clears the counter depends on its complexity; larger or more complicated scopes move to expanded counter or regular plan check, and everything can be submitted electronically.
The plans have to be stamped. The municipal code requires structural computations to be signed or stamped by an engineer or architect licensed by the State of California. There is an exemption in the Business and Professions Code that lets an unlicensed person design a wood-frame single-family dwelling of two storeys or fewer, but it stops applying the moment any part of the work departs from conventional framing, and the building official must then require plans prepared by a licensed engineer or architect. Removing a bearing wall is exactly that departure. LADBS’s own policy is more specific still: for structures over one storey, structural plans and calculations must be signed by a California professional engineer or licensed architect, and the conventional wood-frame exemption cannot be used in the high seismic design categories that cover Los Angeles.
Then it gets inspected, and nothing structural may be covered before it is approved. Expect a footing or foundation inspection before any pour, and a framing inspection with the beam, the posts, the hardware and the shear nailing all still visible. On larger jobs the engineer may also have to perform structural observation as a separate obligation to the owner, with reports at each significant stage; LADBS exempts one-storey wood-framed residential work under 2,000 square feet in our seismic category, so a small single-storey job usually avoids it while a two-storey house with an engineered lateral element usually does not. Steel moment frames, field welding and certain epoxy anchors also carry special-inspection requirements. Whatever the approved plans say about special inspection is what governs on site.
Lead and asbestos come before demolition
Two rules attach to knocking down an interior wall, and both sit ahead of demolition on the schedule.
If the house was built before 1978, the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule applies to anyone paid to disturb painted surfaces. There is a minor-work exemption of six square feet inside a room, but it does not help here, because demolition of painted surfaces is covered regardless of area. The firm has to be certified and use certified renovators. Ask to see the certification.
For asbestos, South Coast AQMD Rule 1403 covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A survey by a Certified Asbestos Consultant or Certified Site Surveillance Technician is required before renovation or demolition, with an exception for single-unit dwellings where less than 100 square feet of intact material is disturbed. Above 100 square feet of material containing more than one percent asbestos, notification must be filed 10 working days ahead. There is an owner-occupant exemption, but it is narrower than people assume: it applies only to an owner living at the property who personally performs the work, with no contractor, laborer, friend or family member helping. Note also that there is no year cutoff for asbestos the way there is for lead. Popcorn ceilings, plaster, joint compound, floor tile and mastic in Los Angeles houses of many vintages can contain it, and only the survey settles the question.
Load-bearing wall removal cost by situation
Two things set the price: what carries the load once the wall is gone (the beam) and what carries the beam (the posts and what is under them). Everything else is patching.
| Situation | What it usually involves | Typical Los Angeles budgeting estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Non-bearing partition wall | Demolition, reroute of any wiring in it, patch drywall and floor | $2,000–$6,000 |
| Bearing wall, single story, raised foundation, span up to about 12 ft | Engineer’s letter and calcs, counter plan check, shoring, LVL or built-up beam (dropped), posts to existing girder or new pier in the crawl space, patching | $10,000–$25,000 |
| Bearing wall, single story, slab foundation | As above, plus saw-cutting the slab for new pad footings under the posts | $15,000–$35,000 |
| Bearing wall with a second story above, or span over about 16 ft | Steel or deep LVL beam, often flush, heavier shoring both floors, engineered footings and hold-downs, regular plan check | $25,000–$60,000+ |
| Open-plan kitchen remodel including the wall removal | Everything above plus new cabinets, island with power and plumbing, relocated sink or range, new circuits, flooring run continuous | $70,000–$100,000+ |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
Opening the wall between the kitchen and the dining room is one of the most requested remodels we see in 1950s to 1970s San Fernando Valley ranch houses; the last row is the full-remodel tier from our kitchen remodel cost guide, and the wall-specific rows are starting points, not a bid.
What is inside the number
| Line item | Typical Los Angeles budgeting estimate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Structural engineer (site visit, calculations, stamped drawings, letter) | $1,500–$5,000 | More for a two-story house or a lateral (shear) redesign |
| Plan check and permit | Set by LADBS fee schedule | Counter plan check for a single-family alteration; regular plan check for two-story or hillside |
| Temporary shoring and demolition | $1,500–$4,000 | Both sides of the wall on a flush beam; both floors on a two-story |
| LVL or built-up lumber beam, hangers, posts, hardware, installation | $3,000–$10,000 | Rises with span and depth |
| Steel wide-flange beam, delivered and set, with connections | $8,000–$25,000 | Crane or manual set; welding or bolted plates |
| New pad footings (per post) | $1,500–$4,000 each | Crawl-space pier is the low end; saw-cut slab footing the high end |
| Electrical rerouting (kitchen package: circuits, island power, lighting) | $3,000–$8,000 | Approved kitchen electrical package; a bearing wall in a kitchen almost always has circuits in it |
| Plumbing reroute for an island | $1,500–$5,000 | Approved kitchen rough plumbing figure; a drain-waste-vent stack inside the wall is a separate problem |
| Asbestos survey and lead-safe practices (pre-1978 house) | $400–$1,200 survey | Abatement, if needed, is priced by the survey |
| Drywall, paint, ceiling and floor patching | $1,500–$5,000 | More when flooring cannot be matched and a room gets refloored |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
The electrical and plumbing lines are the ones people forget. A bearing wall between a kitchen and a dining room in a Valley ranch house usually has the kitchen’s original circuits, a switch leg, sometimes the range feed, and occasionally a drain vent inside it. None of that goes away with the wall; it gets rerouted through the ceiling or the floor, and on a 1960s house that is often the moment the panel upgrade conversation starts.
When removing the wall is the wrong answer
Sometimes the honest advice is a wider cased opening rather than a full removal, or moving the opening a few feet. The situations where we say so:
- The wall is the only braced wall line on that axis, so the replacement is a full engineered lateral system with collectors rather than a beam
- A vent stack in the wall has no available route to the roof and no geometry for an island vent
- The wall is the return-air path for the heating system in a slab-on-grade house with no alternative route
- A second-storey point load lands mid-wall, which also pushes the design past the unlicensed-design exemption
- The house is on a slope steeper than one in three, where the hillside provisions rule out the cheap lateral solutions
- The roof is trussed and the wall turns out to be a required truss brace point
- New footings would mean cutting a post-tensioned slab, or the existing foundation is unreinforced and needs its own attention first
None of these makes the job impossible. They make it a different job, with a different budget, and it is better to know that during design than after demolition. If the house is already showing signs of foundation movement, deal with that first.
How long does removing a load-bearing wall take?
| Step | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Structural engineer: site visit, calculations, stamped drawings | 1–3 weeks |
| Counter plan check (single-story, single-family) | Same day; corrections can add 1–2 weeks |
| Regular plan check (two-story, hillside, HPOZ) | Several weeks; 50 percent surcharge to expedite |
| Shoring, demolition, beam and posts set, framing inspection | 2–5 working days on site |
| New footings on a slab, cure before loading | Add about a week |
| Whole open-plan kitchen remodel, construction | 8–12 weeks |
Because the engineering runs before the permit and the cabinets take about three weeks to manufacture, a kitchen with a wall removal is a four-to-six-month project door to door, against about three months for a same-layout kitchen. Our guide to kitchen permits in Los Angeles walks through the express-versus-plan-check split.
A real open-plan conversion in Torrance
This Torrance house had the arrangement we see constantly: a kitchen closed off from a formal dining room, and a living room beyond a hallway, with none of the three spaces able to see each other. The owners wanted one connected space, which meant taking out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room.
That wall was carrying roof load. An engineer sized a beam to replace it, and temporary shoring held the ceiling while the beam went in. The kitchen and dining room came back to the studs and the flooring came out, which is what let the rough electrical for the island and the new recessed lighting be run properly rather than fished. With the wall gone the layout resolved itself: a long run of white shaker cabinets on the exterior wall, a full-height pantry beside the refrigerator, and an island long enough for four stools. The new flooring runs continuously from the kitchen through to the living room, which is the detail that makes an open plan read as one room rather than two rooms with the wall missing. Every stage is on the Torrance open-plan kitchen project page.
What if a previous owner already removed one without a permit
We find this regularly, usually when we open a ceiling for something else. The signs, in a house where an opening was made and the structure was not properly replaced: a visible sag or dip in the ceiling line across the opening, diagonal cracking in drywall or plaster at the corners of the opening and at nearby door and window corners, doors and windows that bind or swing on their own, sloping floors above, and separated trim. Sometimes what looks like a beam is only a soffit with nothing in it, and there are no bearing posts anywhere. None of these prove a violation on their own, but together they are a reason to look.
Two things are worth knowing. First, responsibility follows the property, not the person: LADBS states plainly that the current owner is responsible for resolving an order even where a previous owner or tenant did the work. Second, the municipal code charges an investigation fee where work has been done without authorization, set at double the normal permit or inspection fee with a minimum of $400, and paying it does not excuse compliance. Resolving it means an engineer investigating and documenting what was actually built, finished surfaces being opened so the concealed beam, posts, hardware and footings can be seen and inspected, and then plan check and inspection as if it were new work, including any retrofit needed to make it comply.
It also follows you to closing. California’s transfer disclosure obligations require a seller to disclose alterations or structural modifications made without necessary permits or not in compliance with building codes, and lenders and appraisers may decline to give value to unpermitted structural work. Buyers routinely ask for a credit or for retroactive permitting as a condition of close, which is a worse position to be in than fixing it on your own schedule.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Have you been in the attic and looked at the framing, and what did you see?
- Who is the engineer, and is the engineering included in this price or billed separately?
- Is the wall doing any lateral work, and if so what replaces it and where do the collectors run?
- Is the beam flush or dropped, and what does the price assume?
- Are new footings included, and does the price cover cutting and patching the slab?
- Where does the vent stack go, and is that route confirmed or assumed?
- Is the asbestos survey in the price, and what happens to the schedule and the number if it comes back positive?
- What does the patching allowance cover, and how far past the opening does it go?
- Who pulls the permit? A contractor asking the homeowner to pull it as an owner-builder is shifting liability onto you.
Verify the license on the CSLB website with workers’ compensation on file before any of that. Our guide on hiring a general contractor without getting scammed covers the rest.
Where we do this work
We remove walls and build open plans from our Van Nuys office across the San Fernando Valley, the rest of Los Angeles County, Orange County, Ventura County, western Riverside County and western San Bernardino County. The pattern changes by area. Valley ranch houses from the 1950s to the 1970s are the classic case: a bearing wall between the kitchen and the dining room, stick-framed rafters above it, and a crawlspace that makes new footings straightforward. South Bay and Orange County tracts more often have trusses, which shifts the question from gravity to bracing. Hillside houses in the Santa Monica Mountains and the canyons bring the hillside provisions with them. See our kitchen remodeling and remodeling services, or all of our service areas.
Load-bearing wall removal FAQs
How do I know if a wall is load-bearing?
The reliable indicators are structural, not visual: joists or rafters landing on the wall perpendicular to it, doubled or blocked joists directly beneath a wall that runs parallel to them, the wall sitting above a girder, an interior footing or a wall on the storey below, or a wall stacked in the same position on the floor above. A double top plate is suggestive but not proof. None of it can be confirmed from the painted side, and a wall can also carry a single concentrated point load while being non-bearing along the rest of its length. An engineer or a contractor who has looked in the attic and at the framing is the only reliable answer.
Do I need a permit to remove a load-bearing wall in Los Angeles?
Yes, always. Structural alteration is not on the city’s exempt-work list, and it does not qualify for an express permit, which covers a kitchen or bathroom remodel only where there are no structural changes. It needs structural plans and calculations stamped by a California-licensed engineer or architect. It may still be reviewable at the counter the same day, since LADBS lists alteration to a single-family dwelling as a counter plan check category, depending on complexity.
Can a non-load-bearing wall still be structural?
Yes, and this is the most commonly missed point in California. A wall that carries no roof or floor load can still be a braced wall panel resisting lateral seismic and wind forces. Removing it removes lateral capacity that must be replaced, typically with additional shear panels elsewhere on the same wall line, a prefabricated portal frame, or a steel moment frame, along with hold-downs, new footings and collector framing to transfer the load.
What kind of beam replaces a load-bearing wall?
Built-up dimensional lumber for short spans, laminated veneer lumber or parallel strand lumber for longer spans in a shallow depth, glulam for larger or exposed sections, a steel wide-flange beam for the longest spans and heaviest loads, or a flitch beam as a hybrid. The size depends on the tributary width, what the beam carries, the deflection limit and the roof dead load, which in Los Angeles varies a lot between tile and composition shingle. Only the engineer can size it.
Why is a flush beam more expensive than a dropped beam?
Because of what it takes to install, not how it looks. A dropped beam hangs below the ceiling and the joists keep bearing on top of it. A flush beam sits inside the ceiling depth, so every joist must be cut and hung off the beam with hangers, the ceiling must be shored throughout, and the beam usually has to be steel or engineered lumber to deliver the same capacity in less depth.
How much does it cost to remove a load-bearing wall in Los Angeles?
Removing a load-bearing wall in Los Angeles typically costs $10,000 to $25,000 for a single-story house on a raised foundation with an engineered lumber beam, $15,000 to $35,000 on a slab where new footings are cut, and $25,000 to $60,000 or more where steel, a second story or a long span is involved. As part of an open-plan kitchen remodel the whole project is $70,000 to $100,000 or more. These are typical budgeting estimates, not a price list; a real project can come in lower or higher.
How much does a structural engineer charge for a wall removal?
A structural engineer’s site visit, calculations, stamped drawings and letter for a single-story bearing wall removal in Los Angeles typically run $1,500 to $5,000 as a budgeting range, more for a two-story house or where a shear wall has to be replaced with a new lateral system. The engineer’s drawings are what LADBS reviews at plan check, so the fee is not optional.
Is a steel beam more expensive than an LVL beam?
Yes. A steel wide-flange beam delivered and set with its connections typically costs $8,000 to $25,000 in Los Angeles against $3,000 to $10,000 for an LVL or built-up lumber beam installed, because steel is fabricated off site, needs a crane or a large crew to set, and needs nailers and bolted or welded connections. Steel earns its cost on long spans, two-story loads and flush installs where the ceiling depth is limited.
How long does it take to remove a load-bearing wall?
The beam itself goes in over two to five working days on site: shoring, demolition, beam and posts set, and the framing inspection. Before that, engineering takes one to three weeks and plan check anywhere from a same-day counter review to several weeks. As part of a full open-plan kitchen remodel the construction runs eight to twelve weeks and the project four to six months door to door.
Is it cheaper to widen the opening instead of removing the whole wall?
Usually, yes. A shorter beam over a wider cased opening carries less load, can often stay in LVL rather than steel, and may land its posts on existing framing with no new footings, so it avoids the biggest cost drivers. It also keeps a shear wall doing its job. On a two-story house or a slab, a wide opening often gives most of the light and sightline of a full removal at a fraction of the structural cost.
Can I remove a wall myself if my house is single storey?
The Business and Professions Code lets an unlicensed person design a wood-frame single-family dwelling of two storeys or fewer, but the exemption stops the moment the work departs from conventional framing, and the building official must then require plans by a licensed engineer or architect. Removing a bearing wall is that departure, and LADBS does not allow the conventional wood-frame exemption in the seismic design categories that cover Los Angeles for structures over one storey. Separately, the state’s minor-work licensing exemption applies only where no building permit is required, so it never applies here.
What happens if a wall was removed without a permit?
The current owner is responsible for resolving it even if a previous owner did the work. Los Angeles charges an investigation fee of double the normal permit or inspection fee, with a minimum of $400, and paying it does not excuse compliance. Resolving it means an engineer documenting what was actually built, opening finished surfaces so the beam, posts, hardware and footings can be inspected, and going through plan check and inspection as though it were new work. It also has to be disclosed when you sell.
Find out what your wall is actually doing
We will get into the attic, look at the framing and the joist direction, check whether the wall stacks, find out what is inside it, and tell you honestly whether it is bearing, bracing, both or neither before anyone writes a number. If it is worth doing, we handle the engineering, the plans, the permit and the build under one contract. The site visit takes about two hours and the written proposal follows within 48 hours. The site visit and the estimate are free, and we reply within one business day.