OK, I am remodeling my kitchen for the eventual sale of the house and move to the mountains. (Nakman's house and land made me jealous!) There is a pass-through from the kitchen to the added-on family room in the back of the house. My plan was to open up the pass-through, at least doubling the length and making it a foot or so taller. When they added the back room on, they also widened the kitchen, and there looks to be a huge header running the length of the house. The wall with the pass-through is a few feet farther out. I took a cabinet down to see what was going on in the wall to see if I could just open the pass-through up and put in a simple header. Well it looks like the pass-through has a huge header, either 2 2x4's on top of one another, or a 1x8. Seems excessive to me for a simple 5 foot wide pass-through. Anyone know of a remodel expert or engineer that could come take a look for me? If this was not a load bearing wall I would have no problem putting in a simple header, but would probably pay an expert to put in the header if it was load-bearing, so I would probably need advice on someone to do that as well. I have remodeled several houses but always stayed away from heavy stuff like this. Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this rambling message.
Timm
Timm