The owners had lived in their 1948 Westboro semi for nine years. They kept saying the kitchen was too small. They were wrong about that.
The kitchen was 11 by 13. That's not small for a 1940s house. The problem was that it was a closed box, with one 32-inch doorway leading to a tight dining room and a heavy plaster wall hiding the living room. So when you cooked, you cooked alone. And the light from the south-facing front windows died about six feet from the back of the house.
We didn't add a square foot. We took out one wall and a partial second one, and the kitchen feels twice the size it did before. Here's what we did and what it cost.
What was wrong before
The original kitchen had cherry-stained oak cabinets from a late-90s update, a 30-inch electric range, and laminate counters that had bubbled near the sink. The fridge sat in a tight nook between the basement door and a wall, with two inches of clearance on either side. You could not open the fridge and the dishwasher at the same time.
The dining room was 9 by 10, which is fine on paper, but with a buffet against one wall and a four-person table in the middle, the path through it was 26 inches wide. People bumped each other every dinner.
The biggest issue was psychological. The kitchen felt like a service hallway between the front of the house and the back. Nobody hung out in it. Guests sat in the living room while the host worked alone. That's the thing the owners were really trying to fix.
What we changed
We removed two walls. The full wall between kitchen and dining room came out. The wall between dining and living room came out for two-thirds of its length, leaving a 30-inch column where the old chimney chase was. Both walls were load-bearing, which we knew from the joist direction in the basement.
The replacement structure was an engineered LVL beam running the full 22 feet across the open span. It sits flush with the existing ceiling. You don't see a dropped soffit. That detail carried real cost between the steel post hidden in the column, the LVL upgrade, and the engineer's stamp, but it's the difference between a renovation that looks like a renovation and one that looks like the house was always this way.
The new kitchen layout is L-shaped along the back and side wall, with a 9-foot island floating in what used to be the dining room. The fridge moved to the side wall and got proper clearance. The range moved to the back wall, lined up with where the old chimney used to be.
The wall removal call
This is the part homeowners ask about most. How do you know if a wall can come out? You look at three things: which way the joists run, what's in the wall (plumbing stack, ducts, electrical), and whether there's a wall directly above it that needs supporting too.
In this Westboro semi, the joists ran perpendicular to both walls we removed, which meant both were load-bearing. The bedroom wall above the kitchen partly bore on the kitchen wall below, which meant the LVL had to handle a point load, not just a uniform load. An engineer specified a triple 1.75 by 11.875 LVL with a hidden steel post in the new column. The permit took three weeks through MyServiceOttawa.
The material choices
The owners wanted warm but not country. We landed on a palette that's specific enough to be worth listing:
- Cabinets: Walnut shaker doors, slab drawer fronts, full overlay, custom-built in our Ottawa shop. Real walnut veneer on plywood boxes, not thermofoil and not a stain on maple pretending to be walnut.
- Island top: Caesarstone Pure White, 3 cm, with a waterfall on the seating end and a mitred bullnose on the working side.
- Perimeter counters: Same Pure White, 2 cm, with a 2-inch backsplash skirt at the cooking wall.
- Hardware: Brass cup pulls on lower drawers, slim brass knobs on uppers. Unlacquered brass, so it patinas with use.
- Floor: White oak engineered hardwood, 5-inch wide, matte finish, run continuous from the front hallway through the new open space.
- Backsplash: Zellige terracotta tile in a soft off-white, 4 by 4, hand-glazed, irregular edges. Costs more to install because every tile is slightly different.
- Range: 36-inch dual-fuel, gas top with electric oven, in matte black with brass knobs.
- Lighting: Two unlacquered brass dome pendants over the island, 22-inch diameter, hung 32 inches off the counter.
Design lesson
Continuous flooring across the old wall lines is the single biggest reason this renovation looks original. If you patch the floor where the wall used to be, your eye sees the seam forever. Pulling all the old hardwood and re-laying the entire main floor added meaningful cost and was worth every dollar.
The result
The kitchen, dining area, and living room read as one room with three zones. The island became the gathering point the owners wanted. The light from the front windows now reaches the back of the house. When you stand at the range, you can see all the way to the front door, 38 feet away.
Counter space went from about 14 linear feet to 22, including the island. Storage went up too, because we used the new long wall for floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinets at the dining-room end. The fridge is integrated, panel-front, so it reads as cabinetry.
The footprint of the kitchen is identical to what it was before. The house is the same size on the outside. But functionally, it doubled.
"The first dinner party we hosted, somebody asked when we built the addition. There is no addition. We just took two walls out."
What drove the cost
This was a fixed-price project with a detailed written breakdown, including permits and the engineer's stamp. The line items that moved the number, in rough order of weight:
- Demo and structural work: two load-bearing walls out, an LVL beam across the span, a hidden steel post, plus drywall and paint to close it all up.
- Cabinets: walnut shaker, custom-built in our in-house Ottawa shop on plywood boxes. Custom millwork is usually the single largest line on a kitchen of this finish level.
- Counters: Caesarstone with a mitred waterfall and fabrication. Waterfall ends and mitred edges add fabrication labour over a standard square edge.
- Backsplash: hand-glazed zellige tile, which costs more to install because every tile is slightly different.
- Hardwood: full main-floor refinish so the floor reads continuous with no patch seam.
- Appliances: homeowner-supplied, so they sat outside our contract.
- Plumbing, electrical, and lighting: relocated to suit the new layout.
- Permit and engineer stamp: the structural scope required both.
The cost drivers on a project like this are scope and finish level: how much structure moves, whether the floor gets touched everywhere, and how custom the cabinetry and stone get. We build every project on a clear itemized proposal so you can see exactly where the money goes. For how these numbers are put together, see our breakdown of kitchen renovation pricing in Ottawa.
What we'd do differently
Three things.
One: the pendants over the island are sized right but hung a hair too high. At 32 inches off the counter, they clear sightlines beautifully but cast slightly less direct light than I wanted. Next time, 28 inches.
Two: the homeowners chose a counter-depth fridge to keep the panel-front look clean. Real-world capacity is meaningfully smaller than a full-depth fridge. They've adjusted, but if I were specifying again I'd push for the 36-inch counter-depth column with a separate column freezer instead. Different budget conversation.
Three: we didn't run a dedicated 240V line for a future induction range. The current range is dual-fuel with a 30-amp 120V plus a gas line. If they ever switch to all-electric, we're opening the wall to add a 50-amp run. Should have done it at framing.
Beyond those, this is one of the cleanest projects we've finished in Westboro in the last three years. The owners host regularly now. They didn't, before.
If you're staring at a closed-off 1940s or 1950s kitchen and wondering whether opening it up is possible, the answer is usually yes. The questions are how the structure has to change, and whether the rest of the floor will read as one room when you're done. We do a free 48-hour feasibility review on Ottawa kitchen wall removals. Call 613-862-4555 or browse our renovation portfolio for more before and after work across Ottawa.