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I had come up with a beautiful symmetric design for my kitchen, and now I found out that there's a huge 8 inch wide structural beam in one of the ugly soffits I wanted to remove. It is such a significant beam that I cannot remove it, and now if I remove all the soffits in the kitchen, and leave the beam, it will look very unsymmetrical. I can't just move the kitchen over from the beam, as I will have hardly any cabinet space.
Here's a design picture I came up with. The existing kitchen has soffits that run along all three walls, until they hit the beam. I would remove all of them, in a perfect world, and get ceiling height cabinets. My ceiling is only 8 feet tall. Now this beam would run directly into the right hand side of the microwave upper cabinet to the other side, above the peninsula. Please note that the software makes the peninsula look like it ends much shorter than the opposite wall cabinet, but it doesn't. They are almost directly opposite each other.
I had come up with a beautiful symmetric design for my kitchen, and now I found out that there's a huge 8 inch wide structural beam in one of the ugly soffits I wanted to remove. It is such a significant beam that I cannot remove it, and now if I remove all the soffits in the kitchen, and leave the beam, it will look very unsymmetrical.
I am sure whatever you come up with will be fine... especially as the design you pictured is very unsymmetrical as it is.
Seriously.
You say it is symmetrical, yet nothing is!
A 3d rendering is of no value- its a proposal. Actual pics of the current conditions would be of help, plus more info. Like; what's above the kitchen? What could possibly be supported by the "beam"? Floor joist/ceiling joist direction? This kind of information will draw a conclusion on the "beam"
Your options are to embrace the beam (i.e. keep it) or get rid of /hide the beam (i.e. hire a structural engineer to give you some (likely expensive) options).
That's the thing about soffits ... they weren't usually created just from a decorative perspective in older homes, but usually housed important things ... like electrical / plumbing chases - or framing/structure.
Keeping the beam will be your more affordable option - so I suggest you rethink your layout. Seems like the beam is essentially at the "end" of your kitchen.. how about embracing it as a demarcation line? (Kitchen starts HERE!) It would look intentional, and wouldn't prevent you from having ceiling height cabinets on the walls where you could remove the soffits..?
First, I agree with k'ledge -- a photo of the CURRENT situation is what is needed NOT a rendering of what you want to end up with.
Secondly, I am stumped as to why / how there is "beam" on what appears to be a flat wall with no doorways / opening nor obvious cross-joist load bearing reasons -- I wonder if there is something ABOVE this space that had to be reframed. Typically a poorly thought-out bathroom remodel, which resulted in floor joints needing to be hogged for new drain lines are major reason for reframing. If that is the case I agree that is makes more sense to rethink the kitchen than to redo a kitchen AND the bath above...
OTOH if the "beam" can be replaces with a smaller glue-lam of appropriate load carrying capacity OR perhaps a section structural steel (along with appropriate ties / posts) it may be possible to "disappear" the replacement inside the wall.
A third option, depending on what the existing situation is like, and the functional needs for the cabinet over the microwave, is just to use the cabinet box to "hide" most of the beam. This might be the most cost effective way to get MOST of the as-shown design implemented and, depending on your budget, probably is worth pursuing...
... A third option, depending on what the existing situation is like, and the functional needs for the cabinet over the microwave, is just to use the cabinet box to "hide" most of the beam. This might be the most cost effective way to get MOST of the as-shown design implemented and, depending on your budget, probably is worth pursuing...
This ^^^ is what I was thinking. OP, if the beam is where you would put your microwave ... well, move your microwave (and whatever else you would put in the cabinet where the beam is). That seems pretty simple so am I missing something?
First, I agree with k'ledge -- a photo of the CURRENT situation is what is needed NOT a rendering of what you want to end up with.
Secondly, I am stumped as to why / how there is "beam" on what appears to be a flat wall with no doorways / opening nor obvious cross-joist load bearing reasons -- I wonder if there is something ABOVE this space that had to be reframed. Typically a poorly thought-out bathroom remodel, which resulted in floor joints needing to be hogged for new drain lines are major reason for reframing. If that is the case I agree that is makes more sense to rethink the kitchen than to redo a kitchen AND the bath above...
OTOH if the "beam" can be replaces with a smaller glue-lam of appropriate load carrying capacity OR perhaps a section structural steel (along with appropriate ties / posts) it may be possible to "disappear" the replacement inside the wall.
A third option, depending on what the existing situation is like, and the functional needs for the cabinet over the microwave, is just to use the cabinet box to "hide" most of the beam. This might be the most cost effective way to get MOST of the as-shown design implemented and, depending on your budget, probably is worth pursuing...
This is what the kitchen looks like now. That monstrosity above, with the holes punched into it, is the soffit that contains the beam. The beam is around 8 inches wide, and the soffit itself is about 20 inches wide if I remember correctly. The fridge would be moved to a back wall facing this scene. The stove would be moved over (a new stove).
What does a cabinet box look like? Do you have examples with photos?
Sorry for all the paint supplies, and tools lying around. We're doing a lot of painting in other rooms and fixing things up. The cabinets are original to the house, and have just been refaced with these unattractive raised panel doors. I want to remove all the soffits, but the one with the holes has the structural beam. The problem is that I don't know how to rethink this layout without losing tons of cabinet space, or having my kitchen being taken over by an obtrusive beam. I've seen beams in kitchens before, but the ceilings were high enough to accommodate them and for tall cabinets, or they were going lengthwise, not horizontally into cabinets.
A 3d rendering is of no value- its a proposal. Actual pics of the current conditions would be of help, plus more info. Like; what's above the kitchen? What could possibly be supported by the "beam"? Floor joist/ceiling joist direction? This kind of information will draw a conclusion on the "beam"
Another alternative is to redesign the layout...
I want to redesign the layout. The beam cannot be removed, and even if it could, it would be at great expense, not just in labor, but structural engineering fees, permits, a major structural design, etc. . .
How would someone redesign the layout without knocking down walls and keeping the same general footprint?
It's unfortunate because your "before" and "after" seem to be from two different angles ..
Your After - seems to be standing in the "eating area" and looking into the kitchen (the beam would be in the foreground, cutting horizontally across the picture).
Your Before - is in the heart of the kitchen, looking at the beam/eating area.
Since the beam completely lines up with the "end" of the kitchen at the moment, it looks to me like it was original structure of the house. Was the eating area part of an addition by any chance?
As far as changing your layout, I don't exactly understand why that's necessary. You can still have Cabinets next to the Beam (by your description, it sounds as though the beam is basically located where you were planning to end your upper run anyway). I would go ahead and box the beam in (If you want to reclaim some of the wasted space, you can box it in tighter to the beam itself) and just run the cabinets right to the beam.
If your issue is that the proportions in the first layout are incorrect (which they kind of have to be if the microwave is really across from the penninsula, but it doesn't show that way) and you were planning to put cabinets where the beam actually is (instead of ending them at the beam) - you don't have a lot of options. You can use a shorter cabinet where the beam is, to recapture some of the space. But you would't really be able to hide a beam that completely bisects your kitchen within a cabinet (the people suggesting that could not have understood the beam totally bisects your kitchen)
It seems that your major problem is aesthetics -- i.e. you want to SEE that your cabinets go all the way to the ceiling, when you're standing in your eating area looking ... and the beam is going to obstruct that view. There's nothing you can really do about that, short of hiring engineers to either move the beam, or raise the beam into the ceiling (if that's even possible, which might not be if you have a second story above it) or replace the beam with something slightly less obtrusive. All of those things would cost decent money, and wouldn't be a guarantee that you could affordably get rid of the beam.
I think your kitchen remodel will be nice, and you'll enjoy it, and that you're going to need to come to terms with the fact that you have a beam.
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