Establish your budget first. That will be the most severe limit on what can be done. Then, what can you DIY? That adds more depth to your budget. Third, assess what other homes in your area have done, or will do. Then assess how long you will remain in the home post renovation. All of those factors affect the scope of work potential.

It depends upon how you live in the house. Do you mind not having a dedicated dining room? If not, then open it up. That said, if this is being permitted, you will need an engineer to come up with the beam size to carry the load of the removed wall. Talk to the building supply people in your area.

We just blew out the walls in our home and it is totally open and we love it. I think most people would rather have a larger open kitchen than another small adjoining room.

We have a 45 year old eat-in-kitchen of similar dimensions. The longest run of wall we have anywhere in the kitchen is 9 feet. Based on what others have done in our neighborhood and our limited budget, we have decided to remove the non-load bearing wall between the kitchen and DR to use the DR for our everyday eat in space.

The pic is a rendering looking into the kitchen from the dining room just to give you an idea. The peninsula is where the wall between the kitch and DR is now located.

Have you seen ItsTheDetails kitchen reveal - it's one of my favs.

Here is a link that might be useful: ItsTheDetails Kitchen Reveal

First...is the wall to the dining room load bearing? This will be more expensive and must be considered in the budget.

Once you know your budget, consider if you need new cabinetry. If you can use the original (maybe just new doors and drawer fronts?) then that may save enough money to take down the wall.

Can you post a plan of your kitchen/dining area? That would make things easier. And let us know how many people are using the space and what your needs are...do you have kids? Do you need a baking area? Do you need a coffee area or snack area? Is the eating area only for 2 or larger?

Best of luck with the planning! :)

If your wall isn't load-bearing, the cost to tear down is minimal. Especially if you can DIY it.

If it is load-bearing, the beam issue depends on the length of the wall. And you may be able to avoid a beam if you don't tear it all the way out but, rather, make it an archway with a header and side supports in the arch way. Again, a super easy DIY project if you have any kind of carpentry skills.

You will really need to know whether that wall is load bearing or not before proceeding. And understand how to shore it up with the beam if it is load bearing so make sure you get that information right first.

It would help if you posted a floorplan of your space, with dimensions. Include surrounding areas so we can see your traffic patterns. You will likely get a lot more and better responses if you could share this information.

It does make sense to find out what is typical for homes in your area if resale is an issue for you.

And I think your home's style makes a difference. For example, I'd be leary of tearing down the wall those rooms if I lived in a vintage Victorian. A new Victorian-looking home, that's different. I don't see if you mentioned anything about your home's vintage or style.

I just tore out the wall between my small kitchen and small dining space as we rarely do the type of formal entertaining that a separate, formal dining room is used for. Even though we haven't gotten to the actual kitchen remodel yet, just having that wall open is fantastic! I no longer feel like I've been sent to the time-out corner when I'm working in my kitchen.

Last thing, there are a lot of discussions here at GW about closed vs. open kitchen plans. Some folks love open; many love closed and separate. It seems to come down to a lot of issues like just how open the kitchen will be to family room/living room where kitchen noise might bother TV watchers, whether the main cook likes company when cooking or would prefer solitude, whether the cook can enjoy sitting at the dining room table even if they are dirty dishes he/she can see in the kitchen or if this will hamper their enjoyment of dinner/after-dinner chatting, noise levels if cook likes to get in the kitchen early but others in the family sleep in and whether the wall will make the noise in the rest of the house an issue for late sleepers, yada yada. You need to self-assess all these various issues to help determine if it's a good idea for you.

You guys are the greatest! You've got me thinking about all those questions you've asked---and that is a good thing! Just what I needed to get me started on this reno.

Let me answer your questions:

Budget---anything reasonable. I've lived with this kitchen long enough and life is too short to wait much longer!

Other homes in our area have removed walls to a more open concept between dining room and kitchen or family room and kitchen. Personally I like the look BUT I don't like the noise factor. I could never see me live in an open concept home. I would like to include a couple of pocket doors to contain the noise.

How long will I live in the home? Probably another 10 years or so. But as I see it, the kitchen needs to be renovated anyways. I think it would be good for resale value. I do wonder if some people would be less inclined to purchase our home if it didn't have a formal dining room.

The wall in question is not a load bearing wall.

I don't think I would miss having a DR. I would only miss having the use of the table as an extra work space!

Won't be saving the cabinets to use for the kitchen.

We are four adult people living in our home. A coffee area would be nice, but not essential. Two to three people are home everyday---heaven help us!

Thanks for the link aliceinjersey. Just what I needed to see!

Loved seeing the reno dr. girlfriend! It really helps me to be able to see what your kitchen looks like with the walls removed. Your kitchen is unbelievable! I love your idea of having higher cabinets on the dining room side to block the view of the '"mess."

I can't take this all in at one time, so I will need time go over the pictures and questions again. But in the meantime, I have taken some pictures so that you can see my kitchen.

My kitchen is located at the back of the house. It is in the middle with the dining room on one side and the family room on the other side. My kitchen has an entrance to the DR, family room, hall to the front door and a back door which we never use.

and another

and another

This is the entrance from the front hall.

We opened up our kitchen and formal dining room, and made it a larger eat-in kitchen. We then relocated the old formal DR to a combined formal living/dining area. We did this because we live in an older home and wanted a formal dining area as well, and when we checked with local realtors they said it was fine as long as there was a formal dining space somewhere in the home. Your home and situation may be different.

The space works so much better for us and we've "gained" real estate in the home by eliminating under utilized separate spaces.

In the photo, does the doorway that is not shown lead to the family room?

While pictures are helpful, It would be easier for us to give you ideas for your floorplan if you posted a drawing of the current layout with dimensions. Also helps to show the spaces around it, i.e. where the dining room and family room are, etc.

Tread carefully. The wall you want to knock down is currently a primary working wall in your kitchen and the kitchen door and the doorway next to it makes that wall harder to work with. You may end up with an open kitchen and not enough wall and bad traffic flow.

True, rmtdoug, and that's why I think a diagram with dimensions would be a good first step for the OP. One of the GW gurus told me that tearing down my wall was a mistake. I disagree. Just getting rid of the claustrophobic feeling when in the kitchen is worth the loss of the wall. But I think I also had less traffic patterns through my space to begin with and those must be dealt with.

@funkycamper, it is very, very difficult to see how a space feels from pictures and floor plans. I made several decisions in my kitchen that look like terrible ideas on paper and make SUCH a difference in person. I suspect the same gurus who advised you against losing the wall would agree with you if they'd ever been in your space in person.

Well, it was just one guru, IIRC, and it was one that I usually agree with. I think that issue also comes down to whether one prefers a closed or open concept kitchen. My MIL is the only one so far that has voiced missing the wall as she likes a cozy kitchen. It never felt cozy to me. Felt more like a jail cell. :)

''Anything reasonable'' as a budget is likely to leave you with pretty good sticker shock! Kitchen projects don't usually fit most people's definition of ''reasonable'' when they first start exploring costs. I've done kitchens with 3K worth of cabinets to 90K, and no one on the front end has ever thought that their budget was too small for what they wanted. It was always too small for their list of wants! LOL!

" I am wondering whether we can really improve this ... OR... . Once that's decided we can proceed with a plan. "

That is best decided WHILE developing the plan, within the scope of a real budget as LWO suggests.

"Where should I seek help for this kind of dilemma?"

See who is available where you are. You can usually get a sense of that without making a commitment.

See if a KD that works with spatial changes and offers alternative options is available where you are. If you find the "right" one they will hold your hand, discuss pros and cons, do a couple of layout options, and will have some form of 3D to help visualize. A bonus if they take you to similar jobs they have done and/or mock up space IRL. No one who does that would work with "reasonable" as a budget-they will want a number to shoot for.

You can do it here with a "layout thread" positing a full plan and letting the layout folks at it. That alone doesn't take care of budget questions though. From what I've seen it helps if you are clear on your goals and decisive (since you will get opposing opinions at times.)

You can do a combination of the two. Go back and forth. Layout here and pros to make sure you meet budget. It can be longer process. Some KD's will resign from that if it gets to indecisive.

Some of what to do and what it will cost depends on what is below-basement, finished?, crawl space? slab...
Every now and then we swap the DR and the kitchen but no way to tell without a full house plan.

Is the table in the kitchen a good size? If not what more/less does it need? and is it currently in regular use? (Just because you can eat in the kitchen, doesn't mean that people do...) when you say you don't want to open it the noise factor would bother...where is the noise that would bother? Loud tv from family room? Or kitchen sounds from kitchen into one or both of the other rooms?

In order to get a better visual with 3D views, you might want to play around with planning tools. There are a lot of good ones out there. I think the easiest to work with is the IKEA planner. You don't need to be using IKEA cabinets to get good use from the planner. Lowe's also has a good one. You could play with lots of different ideas and see them in 3D from different angles. This might give you a better feel for whether or not you like the wall down.

Wow. You guys have a busy forum! As you can see from my forum name, kitchen planning and makeovers are not my specialty!

Thank you so much for yet more thoughts and suggestions. What I have done is to write down all your questions. I agree that I need to put the dimensions on paper. I am attempting to do this with iKEA kitchen planner. I am thinking that it may be best for me to start a new thread---with the same name and marked Part 2), adding more clearer information and a kitchen diagram. I hope that would help to keep all the information together in a more concise manner.

Let me say again---you guys are good!