We just purchased a 100+ year old house. We started to take down one of the walls and found that it is a bearing wall. How do we go about completing this project without having the house fall on us? We want to do this ourselves, we are somewhat experienced, but have not come across this before. Thanks Maria

My advice would be to stop right where you are and call a pro to take care of the bearing wall. You can't just eliminate it. The load that it carries will have to be carried by something...probably a beam, if you want the wall to disappear. And that beam will have to designed and installed by someone who has experience.

Let the pro do that, then you can take it from there.

Not only does it need to be a properly engineered beam, it must have the ends of that beam carry the load to suitable foundation points.

Get a pro right now. There are so many variables we cannot assess on the Internet. It could be a minor problem, or it could be a serious, even life-threatening problem if you spend five more minutes in your home. Perhaps more than any other part of home improvement, dealing with removal of load-bearing walls is one area where you do not want to guess or run the risk of being wrong.

(Of course, if it was life-threatening, then this post is a bit too late.)

Hi, thanks for your concern, but we just took out the drywall, we have not touched the support at all, we did call a pro and should come out and look at it next week. Thanks!!!