Opening Up a Closed Pre-War Kitchen in Fargo, ND

In a house built between roughly 1900 and 1940, the wall between the kitchen and the dining room is the whole project. Take it out and a cramped work room becomes part of the main floor. Whether that wall is carrying load depends on which way the floor joists above it run, and in these houses the answer is genuinely unpredictable, because many have been altered at least twice already. We go into the basement first and read the framing from underneath, where the original structure is still visible and nobody has covered it up.

The part homeowners rarely anticipate is the back stair. A lot of Fargo houses of this era have a second stair descending from the kitchen to the basement, sometimes with a landing that also serves a back door. It occupies exactly the floor area you want for an island or a peninsula. There are usually three options: leave it and design around it, reverse its direction so it runs along a wall instead of into the middle of the room, or remove it entirely and rely on the front stair — which is a bigger decision than it sounds, because it changes how you carry things to and from the basement for the rest of the time you own the house. We lay all three out with what each one costs before you pick.