Whether you want to make some home renovations or repairs to your piece of real estate because you want to spruce up the look of your home for yourself or to entice prospective buyers to bid on it you have plenty of home improvement projects to choose from. Before you start ripping out kitchen countertops or building an attached garage you're going to have to put in a little bit of work to see that whatever home improvement project you want to do can be done.

For instance, if you have plans to widen a room in your home then you have to determine whether or not the walls are load bearing walls before you go and blow the walls out. If you're unsure of what a load bearing wall is then let us fill you in. Basically a load bearing wall is a wall where the load that it bears is rested upon it while also conducting its weight onto the foundation structure.

How to tell if a wall is load bearing.

Most load bearing walls are made out of sturdy materials such as concrete, brick or block. Now that you know what a load bearing wall is and the materials they are made out of what does that mean for your home improvement project? Good question. The answer to that question is that load bearing walls provide buildings with structural integrity and they carry and distribute weight to the foundation from top floors and the roof, which means that any damage to a load bearing wall will more than likely cause finishes to crack, floors to sag, and, at worst, the entire structure of the building to collapse!

You don't want any of things to happen to your home, especially if you own real estate, as that will ruin your home and lead you to spending a lot more money than you had originally intended to spend on your home improvement project.

Now that you know about the damage that can be done if load bearing walls are messed around with how can you tell which walls in your condos in downtown Toronto are load bearing walls? It's quite simple really. Outside walls tend to be considered load bearings walls because of how they support the roof. Walls or beams directly above foundations or concrete footers or girders in the basement of a home are also load bearing walls. Any interior walls that run perpendicular to rafters are also load bearing walls. Pretty much any wall that has a support beam attached to or near it that's above or below it is also a load bearing wall.

So, before you swing that hammer on any wall in your home make sure it's not going to damage your home in a major way because it's a load bearing wall. Good luck!