How much does a kitchen remodel cost? The four decisions that set your number

Search kitchen remodel costs and you get a range so wide it is useless — a number that spans a cosmetic refresh and a structural rebuild. The range is not wrong; it is just answering the wrong question. What you actually need to know is which decisions move you along it, because four of them account for most of the spread and none of them are the ones people spend their evenings on.

Decision one: does the plumbing move?

This is the largest single lever and it is usually settled in one sentence. Keeping the sink and range where they are means the work stays above the floor. Moving the sink means opening the floor, rerouting drain and supply, and meeting current code on everything you touch. In a house over a crawlspace that is manageable. In a slab-on-grade home it means cutting concrete, which is a different order of cost entirely. Ask which foundation you have before you sketch a new layout.

Decision two: cabinets, which is most of the money

Cabinetry is typically the largest line item in a kitchen. The spread between stock, semi-custom and full custom is enormous, and there is a third path most people skip: if the existing boxes are sound — and in a well-built house from the seventies or eighties they frequently are — refacing or replacing doors and drawer fronts delivers most of the visual change for a fraction of the cost. Have someone assess the carcasses before assuming they are scrap.

Decision three: are you electrifying?

Induction ranges, second ovens and EV chargers all land on the same constraint: the service panel. Homes built before the late nineties commonly carry panels sized for a very different household. A load calculation during design costs almost nothing. A service upgrade discovered on installation day, with cabinets already delivered, costs both money and weeks.

Decision four: the age of the house

Behind the cabinets in a pre-1980 kitchen you can reasonably expect some combination of a single circuit doing the work of three, no ground on the outlets nearest the sink, a vent that terminates in the wall cavity, and a subfloor softened by a dishwasher that has been weeping quietly for years. None of these are exotic. All of them become line items the moment demolition starts, which is why a bid with no allowance for concealed conditions is not really a bid.

What barely moves the number

Tile, tap finish, cabinet hardware, paint colour. These absorb a wildly disproportionate share of homeowner attention and a small share of the budget. Spending three weeks choosing between two backsplashes while the question of whether the sink moves stays open is the most common way a kitchen project loses time without saving anything.

Where budgets actually break

Not on overspending at the showroom. Budgets break at the step from a mid-range remodel to a full one — the point where the layout changes and permits, inspections and structural work enter. People plan a mid-range project, decide midway that the wall really should come out, and discover they have crossed into a different tier. Decide that question before demolition, not during it.

How to get three comparable bids

Write the scope down before you ask anyone to price it. Specify whether fixtures move, who supplies appliances and cabinetry, what the allowances are, whether the panel is being upgraded, and what happens if the subfloor is found damaged. Hand the same page to each contractor. Without that you are not comparing three prices for one job — you are comparing three different projects that happen to share a room.

A realistic contingency

Ten to twenty per cent held back for concealed conditions. In a house built before 1980, treat that as a likelihood rather than a precaution. The homeowners who finish on budget are almost always the ones who planned for the surprise, not the ones who avoided it.