People usually ask what a kitchen costs. The more useful question is which of three jobs they are actually asking for, because they are not the same job at different budgets.
Refresh: the layout works, the finishes are tired
Nothing moves. Cabinets are painted or refaced, counters and floor are replaced, hardware and lighting get swapped. The room is the same room, brought back to new.
This is the right answer more often than people expect. If you like where everything is and you are simply tired of looking at it, you do not need a bigger job than this.
Partial: same footprint, everything new
Cabinets out, counters out, floor out, and all of it back in fresh. The sink, the stove and the fridge stay roughly where they were, so the work behind the walls stays contained.
Keeping the footprint is the single largest saving available to you on a kitchen, and it costs you very little in the finished result.
Full gut: the layout has to change
Walls, openings or an island change so the room finally works the way you use it. This is the job to do when the problem is not how the kitchen looks but how you move around it.
It is a longer job with more unknowns, because opening walls is how you find out what is inside them.
If you can describe the problem without mentioning how it looks, you are probably looking at a full gut.
How to tell which one you need
- You are annoyed by the finishes. Refresh.
- The cabinets are failing, or you want everything new. Partial.
- Two people cannot be in there at once, or the fridge blocks a door. Full gut.
What actually moves the number
Within any of the three, a few things do most of the work on the price.
- Whether the layout moves at all
- The cabinets and counters you choose, which is largely in your hands
- What is behind the old cabinets, which nobody knows until they come off
- Whether the floor needs leveling before anything is laid
Thinking about a project?
Tell us what you are looking at and we will come and see it. The walkthrough and the written estimate are free.
