I'm wanting to cut an arch or a rectangle in my living room wall to open up into the dining area.
We had gone ahead and put our new engineered wood floors in, not anticipating doing this. They are glued down with some really expensive, super type glue that the floor guy insisted on using.
I guess I'm curious about a couple of things before I get the contractor in.

First, one side of the wall is paneling and one side is sheet rock. There are electrical outlets in the wall. Don't know if it's load bearing or not, but lets say it is. Is this a relatively easy thing to do as remodeling goes? Would an arch be more expensive?

Will he have to remove some of the new flooring because it will get damaged anyway? I'm paranoid about him not being able to get up the any of the floor he may damage in this process, due to this glue that they used to put it down. I don't remember what it was, but it was very expensive.

I'm also looking to remove 2 built in corner china cabinets in this process so we can replace it with two antique china cabinets.
Has anyone removed built in's to give me some light here as to what to expect?
Mary

Mary, I don't have many answers, but you might get a better response if you can be more specific.

Since you mention messing with the floor I assume you are talking about a doorway rather than a pass-through type opening.

Do you want to enlarge an existing doorway, create a new one, or remove most of a wall?

Exactly how big of an opening are you thinking about?

Thanks for the advice. I was being too vague.

1. I'm talking about removing most of a wall, making about a 7 foot opening into the dining room. There is wide plank engineered hardwood in the rooms that will be adjoined. It IS a load bearing wall.
2. I'm removing 2 built in corner china cabinets.

My two questions are, does this sound like a huge, expensive job? Does it usually involve damaging the surrounding floors? It's glued down, and I'm worried that it will be hard to get up.
The corner cabinets will be trickiest, as that will leave us with several wood floor strips that are angled. My husband wants to just meet the angles to the wall. I am thinking remove the strips and lay new flooring straight.
What would you do?