This sequence may be helpful to someone taking out a wall. Addition is 12 x 26. We knocked out 26 feet of bearing wall at front of house. Girder trusses now bear the load. We had a construction company design consultant help us do the plan. Worth the money. DH and his squad of helpers worked from the outside in, but at a difficult day about a year ago, the wall had to come down. Wish I could show you the early work, but Flickr account has put the early photos into storage. The story picks up 5 months into the DIY project... Here is destruction day photo (red painted area is new area) Here is #2 after demo of the wall (note ceiling and floor) It was at this point that we moved the cooking into a camper trailer for 5 months. Here you can see new ceiling (upper right) meeting the old ceiling segments in former kitchen, stairwell, and front stoop. (Don't try to understand geography, just absorb the general concept that ceiling segs are merging.) Here we have removed former ceiling fixtures in original kitchen ceiling and installed wiring for a new light in our new kitchen hall. I've skipped the photos dealing with messing with insulation. This is where we were finishing new ceiling over new lobby. Rented jack scaffold for wallboard. Seam between old and new ceilings is red. Here is the beginning of trying to reconcile ceilings. DH used lots and lots of mud on this seam. This is the ceiling scar which persisted for many many days. Once we began painting, this area developed bubbles. (It's finally done bubbling, we hope.) The diagonal floor was made in 1954. The rest is new, including redone old front hall which now incorporates part of previous garage. Here is the eventual floor--can you find the merged section? You sorta can if you physically walk to the door opening at upper left because the floor had dipped 1.5 inches about a foot from the threshold, but we're generally proud of how things went. By the Install Day for countertops, the ceiling seems to look pretty good. I wish I had more appropriate photos that show the merged ceiling and floor, but I don't.

The property is 3 years old......so the house has been built. The open to sky photos are from 2015 during original construction. My opinion is yes, as far as I can tell from your photos, you're considering removing a wall that has a laminated header ("Smart Joist") sitting on top of it, so it is load-bearing.

There is no absolute guarantee that a custom shower won't leak, but the best assurance is a competent installation by a reputable contractor. Then, of course, that problem is how to identify a competent, reputable contractor. For this, there is no shortcut to getting references and actually checking the contractor's prior work. You might also look at the technology the contractor uses. Years ago we, like everyone else, built custom shower pans out of concrete and butyl rubber membranes. Then, about 25 years ago Schluter came up with a better system using a patented Kerdi membrane. This is the new, better, almost idiot-proof technology. We have never had a leak through the pan or shower walls using the Schluter system. Anyone that still uses the older system is woefully out of date and greatly increasing the risk of a leak. So, find out how the contractor builds his or her showers.

I got the cabinets through Home Depot (20% off) they are not higher end but they have held up extremely well and we’ve been happy with them. I don’t remember the brand, but the color is cognac on maple. They’re standard kitchen cabinets. We got 2 regular drawer banks, 1 extra wide drawer bank, 2 sink cabinets and the closet you can see in the picture for about 1800 w/the discount. We bumped the shower wall 6 inches into the bedroom to make the shower bigger, pulled the cabinets out from the wall a couple of inches to provide more counter top. And curved the edge the counter for interest. Just for fun, this is what we had to start with. The tub was rusted and there were two doors, 1 from the hall & 1 from the master bedroom, we closed up the hall door. I think we got our moneys worth. LOL As for the labor, I found my Contractor through a plumber I had hired to put in a kitchen faucet. I asked if he had someone good he could refer and he referred Matt to me. Matt had his own company but just him and his guys. All of his work was by word of mouth, he didn’t advertise or push for business, he didn’t need to. I think I got fair pricing from him because he didn’t have the overhead a lot of the larger companies might have. He wasn’t the least expensive and he wasn’t the most expensive. Finding someone who was willing to work on our schedule and not having to have it done ASAP is what really helped me to be able to keep our costs at a minium for both labor and materials.