Midland, TX
Soffit Removal & Opening Up the Layout in Midland, TX
Take out the dropped bulkhead, raise the cabinet run, and turn a closed boom-era kitchen into one room with the den.
The dropped soffit above the uppers is the signature of a Permian Basin kitchen built between about 1975 and 1985. It exists because 30-inch cabinets were cheaper than 42-inch cabinets and because it gave the framers somewhere convenient to run duct and wiring. Taking it out is usually the single change that does the most for how a kitchen of this vintage feels, because it lets the cabinet run go to the ceiling and it removes the horizontal line that has been cutting the room in half for forty years.
What it costs depends entirely on what is inside it. Some soffits are hollow and come down in an afternoon. Others carry a branch duct, a vent, or a run of romex that has to be rerouted before anything closes back up. The same applies to the wall between the kitchen and the den. If it is not carrying roof load, opening it is straightforward. If it is, the opening needs a header sized for the span, and on a slab-on-grade house that sometimes means a point load landing where there is no thickened footing under it. We look above the ceiling and check the framing direction before quoting either one, so the number we give you is not a guess that grows later.