building off of what renovator said, if you have load bearing walls on the first floor, you need to align structure below them in the basement. This can be beams or walls. Frame walls will be your cheapest option in most cases. However if you do not want a wall there, then price is not always the driving factor. However if you are a single story plus a basement, you shouldn't have too many first floor interior bearing walls. If you use steel or LVL beams, they must be sized to carry the first floor load as well as the loads placed on the first floor (2nd floor and possibly roof loads). As you can guess, this can make wood beams, even built up, quite deep. Steel might be your best bet here if you have longer spans between columns in your basement to keep head room heights at ideal levels. I tend to disagree with the claim in wood costing more then steel. Steel will cost more then wood in most cases. The post can be hidden inside walls (why would you do this? save the money and make the wall bearing! unless of course you have a very high point load) or they can be boxed out and made decorative. I joists should actually be cheaper then a floor truss, but typically cost a little more then solid 2x8-12 framing. However IMO, I joists are far superior. They can be had in very long spans so they can lay a continuous 30'+ joist across your load bearing beams/walls and allow for straighter and faster construction. Also, depending on the depth of them and the spacing, they can easily clear span 20'+. Plus they are a "greener" product. Trusses will cost more, but the benefit you have there is the web openings to allow easy smaller duct runs and electrical access.

I asked the contractor if we needed a structural engineer to take a quick look. The contractor assured me that he was confident about framing out the wall that connects to the garage. However, a day later, I get a voicemail from him stating that the inside wall, the one that had the pantry door is load bearing. I was planning to push that one out to the left 3". He said we just need to be sure about the measurement, whatever that means. Are there techniques for moving a small section of a load bearing wall? I will have a small broom closet whose side walls will be perpendicular to the load bearing wall (that has been now stripped down to the studs). Perhaps those could take on some of the weight? The closet is only going to be about 15" wide. I am hopefully meeting with the contractor on Monday, to scope out the dimensions of the wall. Just want to know what sort of questions I should ask and to have opinions that may jive with what he says. Thank you!

Benjamin, I would think that an experienced builder could look at it and tell you what needs to be done right off the bat, without going to the expense of hiring an engineer. There's nothing wrong with getting a quote and then deciding to do all or part of the work yourself. The reason I asked if the original builder put up the wall, is that the work looks kind of amateurish to me. Why go to the trouble of building a wall, using that much wood and not finishing it, when a simple beam with support posts would have been much easier to do. What is on the floor over that wall? Maybe a previous owner was trying to correct a problem or trying to put in additional support for something heavy (like a waterbed). If the wall is a true bearing wall, I would think that it's also supporting another bearing wall on top of it. I'm having a bearing wall taken down on my first floor and wanted to move one of the supports for the beam that the builder is putting in. My builder told me that the support had to be there because it would sit over a support in the basement and it's important to transmit the load from above all the way to the ground.

The video concentrates on the walls and not the ceiling, which is unfortunate. It's hard for me to pick out the joists versus the blocking with most covered by the furring strips. But the wall you want to take down, it didn't appear that the top plate ran all the way across the ceiling, from left-to-right. It just went from the left side of the wall to the still-standing doubled up stud with the outlet on it. I'm referring to 1:40 into the video. Based on the location of the room and the framing structure you showed? Tear it down.