Kitchen Renovationin Toronto & GTA

Kitchen renovations typically run $25,000–$50,000. A cabinet-and-counter refresh in the existing footprint starts around $18,000; a full rebuild with a relocated sink and a new island lands at the top of the range. Cabinetry is usually 40-50% of the total, which is why the box construction matters more than the door style - plywood carcasses with soft-close hardware outlast particleboard by a decade and the price gap is smaller than most people expect. Moving the sink is the single most expensive change you can make to a layout, because it means opening the floor for drain and vent. Projects above $50,000 are typically beyond our usual scope.

Most kitchens are finished in three to five weeks on site. Cabinetry is the long lead - custom orders run 4-8 weeks from the day you sign off on the drawings, so we order early and demolish only once the boxes have a confirmed delivery date. That way your kitchen is not sitting gutted while you wait on a factory. Build in a buffer for the two items that slip most often: appliance backorders, which is why we confirm your actual model numbers before the cabinet drawings are finalised, and counter fabrication, which cannot begin until the cabinets are installed and levelled.

A like-for-like cabinet and counter replacement does not need a permit. The moment the sink, dishwasher, range or electrical outlets move, you need one, and if a wall is coming out you also need stamped engineer drawings. The wall between a kitchen and living room is the one that catches people: it reads as cosmetic and is load-bearing more often than not in Toronto’s post-war housing stock. Two related things worth knowing - a modern kitchen needs dedicated circuits for the fridge, dishwasher, microwave and range, which frequently means a panel upgrade in older homes, and the range hood has to vent outside rather than recirculate if you are doing the work properly. We pull the permits and handle plan-exam comments and inspections.

No. The kitchen is out of service from demolition until the counters are templated and installed, which is usually the last two weeks of the schedule. Plan for three to five weeks of no kitchen and set up properly rather than improvising - fridge, microwave, kettle and a folding table in the dining room or basement, plus a plan for washing up, because the laundry tub becomes your sink. We leave the old fridge on a working circuit until the new one arrives, and we can stage the plumbing so a basement or laundry sink stays live throughout. Clients who set this up on day one cope fine. The ones who wing it are ordering takeout by week two.

Because a template taken off drawings will not match the cabinets as installed. Quartz and porcelain slabs are measured after the boxes are set and levelled, when the fabricator can capture the walls as they actually are - and no wall in a Toronto house built before 1980 is straight. Fabrication then takes 7-10 days. Everything downstream waits on that slab: the sink drops into it, the faucet mounts through it, and the backsplash tile sits on it. So the final week of a kitchen is counter delivery, plumbing hook-up and tile, in that order. It is also why a counter mistake is the most expensive one on the job, since a mis-cut slab means starting the 7-10 day clock again.

Cabinetry, counters, backsplash tile, sink, faucet and lighting come through us. That is deliberate: when a door arrives damaged or a slab has a flaw, one party is responsible for fixing it and there is no argument about who owns the problem. Appliances are the exception - buy them yourself. Retailer sales and extended warranties beat anything we can pass through, and you keep the relationship with the retailer if a unit fails in year two. What we need from you is the actual model numbers before the cabinet drawings are finalised, because a 30-inch range and a 36-inch range are a different kitchen, and a counter-depth fridge that turns out not to be counter-depth is the sort of thing discovered on install day.