If you have a vaulted ceiling in your living room then that steel beam is the ridge beam for your roof over the vault.
It is common to have a ridge beam over a vaulted ceiling living room and conventual ridge board framing over the bed rooms.
Whoops! Should have been more clear. My response was 2 parts didn't come across that way. I was speaking about the I beam to reference the fact I believe the wall that the garage shares with the house is load bearing. I have regular ceilings in the living room with the I-beam above the sheetrock.
That being said you answered the second half of my question that the new system would then be a ridgebeam roof style
I am guessing what your carpenter would do is put a beam under the current ridge board with temporary supports.
The beam may be steel or double or triple 2 x's depending on his preference.
Then permanent supports for the new beam ends are put in the left and right walls.
He will need to put Simson connectors at the current rafter/roof board joint and the rafter/top plate joint because those joints will change from compression to tension when the joists are removed.
At this point the weight of your roof is supported by the new beam and it's end posts and the joists and those verticals hanging down to them can be removed.
But get a guy with framing experience, not just a low cost nail pounder.
You are reversing the push and pull of the whole roof assembly and you need a guy that understands that.
So from what I gather I can "salvage" a lot of the existing roof structure if done correctly?






