That Saturday I tore out a load bearing wall without checking anything

Last month I decided to open up my kitchen and dining room in Columbus by knocking out what I assumed was a partition wall. Spent the whole Saturday with a sledgehammer and a pry bar, made a huge mess, and felt like a champ until the door frame upstairs started sticking. Called a structural engineer on Monday and he took one look at the header I exposed and said 'you're lucky this house is still standing'. The fix cost me $2,300 plus a week of temporary shoring and a new LVL beam. Has anyone else learned the hard way that some walls are just not yours to remove, and how much did your mistake run you?

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harperwright22d ago

$2,300 is cheap for that lesson, I paid twice that after my ceiling sagged for a month.