Replacing single door with double doors

[lizziecupcakes]

hi all,
I have a single door to my living room but want to increase the size to about double door. I've attached a photo of the current door and to the left is where I want to make it larger.

Does anyone know how this is done?
Do I need a structural engineer to look at this first?
Should I purchase the doors I want first and then "cut to size" when ready?

Thank you ( I'm a newbie at this )

 

[Gothichome]

The first question you should know, is this a load bearing wall? Opening up these types of walls can cause all sorts of issues. If not load bearing your task will a lot less critical. A good hint to load bearing or not can be found in your footings. If the wall in question sits on a footing, you can bet it’s load bearing, it there is a wall on a second floor wall over top chances are it will be load bearing. Check in the attic, if there is structure over the wall reaching the roof then it’s most probably a load bearing wall. In either case you will need to increase the length of the header above the wall, maybe even install a larger header. I would think an experienced builder should be able to determine what is needed.