Is brick pillar load bearing?

[spiro1263]

Hello.

The kitchen and dining room in my 1987-build house are essentially one big room divided by the kitchen wall units/breakfast bar and a brick pillar that supports one end of the wall units referred to.

Ideally I would like to remove this brick pillar but would like some advice on whether this is load-bearing. A guy down the road in the same style house as us removed his recently, apparently without any problem and reckons it was just decorative and for supporting the adjacent wall units. (the former fireplace was also constructed from the same style decorative brick as the pillar).

I have removed some of the plasterboard ceiling to look at the layout of the joists and they are shown in the attached rough sketch. (Black lines are joists, orange are brick load-bearing walls). All joists are 8 inches deep with a breadth of 4 inches. There are two joists side by side that seemingly run on top of the brick pillar although only the one nearest the stair opening actually seems to be making contact with the top of the pillar.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this one?

Thanks

Mike

View media item 8790

 

[Shytalkz]

I wouldn't expect it to be loadbearing with those spans and joist sizes.