How do I tell if a post is a support post/beam or not? We have a vertical post bordering our living room and kitchen and it is right at the point of the divider between the two rooms mounted to the slab on bottom and the wall top at top. There is also a banister/railing connected to this post that goes back to the back door. This post and banister flow back to the back door of the house about 5 feet. Opposite the banister and post is another 5 feet of open space for traffic in/out of living room/kitchen. So the vertical post is almost dead center of this 10 foot open space. One may think it supports the wall/ceiling, but it matches nothing in the house except the very large 2 ceiling joists and looks like an add-on. The ceiling is vaulted and the 2 large ceiling joists are probably 18" wide x 4" thick x 20'ft long spanning across the whole ceiling of the living room. The vertical post that we want to remove bordering the kitchen/living room is about 1 foot offset to the left of underneath 1 of the very large ceiling joists.. so its not directly under it... but this could've been to keep the walkway between the 2 rooms kinda wide. Anyway, I've been in the attic to look at what the very large ceiling joists rest on and I can't see totally under it due to insulation and other junk in the way but its resting on something hefty because those joists had to have been put there by a crane or a lot of men at once ... "I think" I could remove the vertical post in kitchen and not worry about adding anything in its place, but I'm not sure. How do I get sure? What do I look for here that will concretely tell me its ok to remove it? A person who does floors, who wants our business, told us that the post is not a support post and could be removed, however he stands to make $4000 for doing a wood floor for us, so I'm not entirely trusting of him. Thanks.

My wife and I are in the process of turning a former next-to-the-wall bathtub into a tub/shower. So far we have torn out the drywall on the three walls surrounding the tub, put in a vinyl moisture barrier, and covered the area where we pulled out the drywall with Hardiebacker. What do we do from here? We didn't cut the drywall away perfectly so in some places there is anywhere from a 1/16" to a 1/4" gap between the Hardiebacker and the drywall. There are also small gaps between pieces of Hariebacker. Some websites talk about filling it in with modified thinset and some kind of tape, others don't mention the tape, and still others skip this step completely. We're kind of lost as to how to proceed from here, and neither of us has really done any kind of significant home projects before. Detailed steps on what to do from here would be really appreciated!