The floor plan to my house is a traditional N.E cape. We want to take out the coat closet (that is adjacent to the front door and the bottom of the stairs) and open up our dinning room to the living room. The wall is not a load bearing all, but I think/know it must be more involved. Knocking out the back of the closet into the dinning room won't be so difficult (I hope) but, I think the closet door frame has to be cut out to the existing ceiling so it doesn't look like an empty door frame. Plus this would allow the front door to open all the way not just to the closet door frame as it does now. How difficult from 1 to 10, any gotcha's that I should be aware of and do you think it requires a permit? Thanks in advance.

I have damaged walls from contact, yes, contact paper. What, if any, are the advantages to skim coating? Is it prone to cracking? Should I just rip down every wall in the house and start from scratch?