Removing walls in a house

[Ethan Daniel Dacar]

I’d like to remove a wall at my personal residence, I want to do it the correct way and pull permits so later down the road when I sell the property they will see that the work done was inspected.

Just looking for some pointers on who I should reach out to or what permits I need to pull to get it done, I’m in Everett WA area so if anyone has any contacts that could help me please message me.

Thank you!!

[Raymond L Tennal Jr]

@Ethan Daniel Dacar, 

Just joined, but this is an area I'm well versed in.  I'm a structural engineer with 8 years experience and 12 years or architectural development working in Northwest Washington, primarily on Whidbey Island, WA. 

The first place to start is get a building design on board.  You could go with an architect, but they are likely to charge you between $120 to $150 and hour for design services.  The building design should run between $75 to $120.  

Next thing to determine if the wall you want to remove is a bearing walls.  The first thing I ask is "when was this home built"  Home built prior to say 1975 used stick built roof and often had interior bearing walls as these roof system have shorter span than trusses.  Younger home are often built with trusses and typical span from exterior wall to exterior wall, but not always the case.  Span for trusses can be as much as 30 ft, but most don't span more than 24ft.  Now if there is a floor above, interior walls could be bearing walls.  Floor joist and support spans between 12 to 18 feet.  You can span greater, but it is high unlikely.  So the question here is, what is the frame above the wall... if it runs parallel the wall is likely non-bearing, if perpendicular it is likely that it is bearing.  However, it also depends on what is going on above if it is a two story.  Another way to determine if it is a bearing wall is to see if there is a beam line in the crawlspace.  Slab on grade construction is not as easy to identify.   

Hopefully that helps you get started.