What a Kitchen Renovation Actually Involves, Week by Week

A kitchen renovation looks like one job from the outside. On site it is eight or nine trades taking turns in the same small room, each of them waiting on the one before. The part homeowners find hardest is usually not the work itself — it is not knowing what is supposed to be happening on a given day, or why the room sat untouched for six days after the cabinets went in.

Below is the order a kitchen actually runs in, what is happening at each stage, and where the schedule really gets decided. It is written for houses and condos in Toronto and the GTA.

How long does a kitchen renovation take?

A kitchen that keeps its existing layout commonly runs somewhere around five to eight weeks on site once demolition starts. Moving plumbing, taking out a wall or changing the footprint adds to that. The single longest pause is not labour at all — it is the countertop, which cannot be measured until the cabinets are standing.

Those ranges are general context for planning, not a schedule for any particular kitchen — your own dates come from your drawings, your building, and what demolition finds.

What happens in week one, and why does it change the plan?

Week one is demolition, and demolition is really a survey. Everything the drawings assumed becomes checkable for the first time: what the walls are made of, where the drain actually runs, whether the wiring can carry a modern kitchen. In older Toronto housing stock this is where a project either confirms its plan or gets a new one.

The things that most often turn up behind a Toronto kitchen wall:

• Knob-and-tube wiring in pre-war and early post-war houses. It has no ground, insurers take a dim view of it, and a kitchen full of new appliances is not the place to leave it.
• An electrical service that is too small. A current kitchen wants dedicated circuits for the range, fridge, dishwasher, microwave and counter receptacles. Older homes on a small panel or service may need an upgrade, and that runs on the utility's calendar, not the site's.
• Plaster and lath instead of drywall, which is heavier, dustier and slower to take out than anyone budgets for.
• A wall doing more than it looks. Some partition walls carry load, and some carry a duct, a stack or a beam pocket. That has to be confirmed before it comes out, not after.
• Old water damage under the sink base or behind the dishwasher, usually invisible until the cabinet is gone.

Nothing on that list is a disaster on its own. All of them are worse when they are found in week four instead of week one, which is the argument for opening up the room early and re-pricing honestly at that point rather than pushing on. This is also the part of the job where a single point of coordination matters most — see how we handle it under general contracting.

What is a rough-in, and why does nothing seem to be happening?

Rough-in is all the work that ends up buried: framing corrections, drain and vent lines, water supply, gas if there is any, electrical circuits, and the duct for the range hood. It is the stage that decides whether the finished kitchen works, and it is the stage that looks like the least progress, because at the end of it the room is still open studs.

Two things stall a rough-in more than anything else. The first is an appliance that has not been chosen. A rough-in is dimensioned from real specification sheets — the height of the hood duct, the depth of the fridge box, whether the range is gas or induction, where the dishwasher drain has to land. A model chosen later than this stage means opening a wall twice.

The second is inspection scheduling. Electrical work in Ontario is notified to and inspected by the Electrical Safety Authority, and permitted plumbing and structural work is inspected by the municipality. Nothing gets covered until the inspection passes. A day or two waiting for an inspector is normal and not a sign anyone has stopped working.

Does a kitchen renovation need a permit in Toronto?

Broadly: replacing cabinets, counters, flooring and fixtures in the same layout generally does not need a building permit, while removing or altering a wall, changing structure, adding or relocating plumbing fixtures, or changing a window or door opening generally does. Electrical work is notified to the ESA either way. Confirm your own scope with the City before demolition.

Two details that catch people out:

• The permit is tied to the work, not to the room. An otherwise cosmetic kitchen with one relocated sink is usually a permit job because of the sink. Check the current requirements on the City of Toronto building permit pages, or ask your contractor to confirm the scope with the city for your address.
• A condo has a second approval on top of the first. The corporation's rules usually govern working hours, elevator booking, protection of common areas, noise and what may be altered at all — and board approval takes its own time before anything starts. We cover that process on our condo and apartment renovations page.

In houses, Toronto's noise bylaw also limits when construction noise is permitted — daytime hours on weekdays and Saturdays, and not on Sundays or statutory holidays. It is worth knowing before you plan a crew around a long weekend.

Why is there a long gap after the cabinets go in?

Because a stone or quartz countertop cannot be measured from drawings. A fabricator templates the actual installed cabinets, then cuts, polishes and finishes the slab off site. That fabrication window is commonly one to two weeks, and it starts only after template day. It is the one part of a kitchen that a bigger crew cannot speed up.

What you can control is not losing days before template day. The fabricator needs specific things in the room to take a usable template:

Plan the gap rather than fight it. It is a good window for the final paint cut-in, for a floor that still needs protection removed, and for anything on the punch list that does not touch the counter run.

What order do flooring, cabinets and paint go in?

Flooring usually goes down before the cabinets, so a dishwasher can be pulled out later without hitting a step, and so the toe-kick line stays clean. Cabinets are set on the finished floor. Primer and the first coat of paint go on before cabinets; the final coat goes on near the end, after the knocks and scuffs of installation have already happened.

The exception is a floor that is being installed under cabinets for height reasons — a tile build-up that would leave the dishwasher trapped, for example. That gets decided at design, not on the day, and it is worth asking about when the layout is agreed.

What is a punch list, and why is the last five percent slow?

A punch list is the written record of everything still outstanding once the kitchen is functionally finished: a door that needs adjusting, a caulk line, a scratch, a missing filler panel, an outlet plate. It is short work spread across several trades, which is exactly why it takes longer than it looks — each item waits for the person who can do it.

What makes it go quickly is writing it down once, in one walkthrough with the contractor, instead of sending items in one at a time over three weeks. Cabinet doors in particular want a second adjustment after the room has been through a heating cycle, so a few items are reasonably left for a later visit.

What actually pushes a kitchen renovation past its schedule?

Almost never the trades. In practice it is decisions and orders — things that happen off site, weeks before anyone notices the effect. The table below is the short list worth watching.

What should be decided before demolition day?

Everything that a later trade measures from. If these are settled before the first cabinet comes off the wall, most of the table above stops being relevant:

• Final layout, including where the fridge door swings and whether it clears the island or the wall.
• Every appliance chosen by model number, with specification sheets in hand.
• Cabinet drawings signed off against those appliances, including fillers and panel ends.
• Sink and faucet purchased, not just selected.
• Countertop material, edge profile and overhang.
• Flooring, backsplash tile, grout colour and full quantities ordered.
• Lighting plan: how many circuits, which switches, where the under-cabinet lighting is fed from.
• Where you will cook and wash up for the duration, and where the fridge will live.

That last one is not a detail. A kitchen renovation is the one job that removes the room the household runs on, and a temporary setup arranged in advance is much calmer than one improvised on demolition morning.

If you are planning a kitchen in Toronto or the GTA and want the sequence set out against your own drawings, see our kitchen renovation service, have a look at finished work in the project gallery, or get in touch and we will walk the space with you.