Knock down wall, build breakfast bar?

I have what would be an open plan kitchen/living room area except there's a half a partition wall in between them (I mean "half" in the sense that you can walk around it; it's a full wall from floor to ceiling). It's 160cm wide and 10cm deep and I hate it.

I was thinking it would be useful to have a breakfast bar instead in that space and I'm wondering exactly how to go about this - would it be possible to leave about a metre of the wall standing and use it as the basis of the breakfast bar? Or would it be less trouble/cost to just get rid of the wall completely and build the breakfast bar from scratch? And does anyone have any idea how much it will cost? (I know it will part depend on whether it's a loadbearing wall or not)

Thanks for any advice and please excuse my utter newbieness at this sort of thing.

it should cost you no more than 5 k to take down wall and put up rsj,if you know any friend family who is handy then you could easily do it for 3 k less including skip to take wall down, to hire out supports for the day would be less than 50euro, knocking the wall is the easy part and that if it it is load bearing, if it is not load bearing than easier again, if you need an rsj then it will be anything from 50e to 200 depending on what sort you need, remember an rjj can be to heavy as well as to weak, so best id to get an architec to tell you which one to get, if you are handying you could knock wall youtself then get plasterer to tidy up walls and ceiling for you, you could do all this for 1 k less including breakfast bar if you do it yourself or know someone

Call in a structural engineer immediately, an architect will go
to him anyway to spec the rsj and his insurance will then cover it.
you will also need him to look at the foundations and recommend
an additional pad if necessary. Sounds to me like it is a load bearing
wall and as such TAKE NO CHANCES, a reputable structural engineer
is your first stop - money well spent.

Thanks for the info but I already know this stuff - what I'm trying to ascertain here is the specific issue of whether the bottom part of the wall can be directly converted into the basis of a breakfast bar, or whether I will need to knock it all down and start from scratch.

I'd imagine the only issue would be whether it is still structurally sound after knocking the top portion of it.

On top of that, removing it completely and using posts to support the bar may make the space look bigger and flow more naturally.
Leo