Remove the Guesswork From Your Timeline
How long does a kitchen remodel take, really? Is it the 6 to 8 months that many contractors promise?
In this post, you’ll learn how a kitchen remodel breaks down phase by phase, from the first planning meeting to the day you cook in it again.
You’ll see what stretches a timeline, how long you’ll really be without a kitchen, and how Bunn & Sons Custom Builders keeps our projects on schedule.
By the end, you’ll know what to expect month to month, and what to ask before you sign anything.
How Long Does a Kitchen Remodel Take?
A full kitchen remodel takes about 2 to 4 months of construction once demolition starts.
Before that, design, material selections, and permitting all happen during a planning phase that can run several weeks to a few months, depending on how many design rounds your project needs.
The more you change the layout, and the more structural work there is, the longer the build runs.
Here’s what many people don’t know: most of the timeline is planning, not construction.
The build is the shorter, louder stretch.
And in 10 years of doing this, the projects that finish on time are almost always the ones where every decision got made before demolition day.
How much can a kitchen remodel cost?
The Phases of a Kitchen Remodel
A kitchen remodel runs in a set order.
Here’s how a full project moves from an idea to a finished kitchen.
Planning and Design (several weeks to a few months)
This is where your schedule gets set, and it’s the phase we care about most.
We run it as a Project Development Agreement, a dedicated pre-construction phase built around four meetings.
- Kickoff, usually within 1 to 2 weeks. We meet at your home, you meet your project manager and designer, and we get into how you cook and how you live around the kitchen.
- Concept, about 3 to 6 weeks. We present design concepts and layouts, plus another 2 to 4 weeks per round if you want to refine the direction.
- Design development, about 3 to 6 weeks per pass. We lock in floor plans, cabinetry, countertops, appliances, flooring, tile, lighting, and every other selection.
- Contracting and construction launch. We sign the fixed-price build contract, order your materials, confirm the permit’s approved, set your start date, and schedule the trade partners.
Fixed-price vs. cost-plus remodeling contracts.
By the time we sign the build contract, there’s nothing left to decide, and that’s exactly why the build doesn’t stall later.
Demolition and What’s Behind the Walls
Now the loud (and usually quicker) part starts.
The crew pulls the old cabinets, counters, flooring, and fixtures down to a clean slate.
It’s also our first real look behind your walls.
Older homes hide things, like dated wiring, tired plumbing, or framing that isn’t up to code.
Most of that we’ve already caught during planning, since that phase is built to surface it before we price your job, not after.
If something genuinely undiscoverable does turn up, it’s a documented change with a clear cost presented to you, not a surprise that quietly grows.
Rough-In and the Big Installs
Once the demo’s done, we build back up from the bones out.
Plumbers and electricians run the new lines for your sink, dishwasher, and lighting, and it all gets inspected before the walls close.
Then the parts you can see start going in: flooring first, then cabinets, then countertops.
Countertops take their own beat, since the slab can’t be templated until the cabinets are set, and then it has to be fabricated and installed.
This is the longest part of the build, but once it’s done, your kitchen finally looks like a kitchen again.
Finishes and the Final Walkthrough
The last stretch is finishing work.
Backsplash, paint, hardware, light fixtures, and hooking up the appliances so everything runs.
Then we walk the whole kitchen with you and write down anything that needs another pass.
Small as those items usually are, we don’t call your kitchen done until that list is empty and you’re happy with it.
What Makes One Kitchen Take Longer Than Another
Two kitchens the same size can finish a month apart.
It usually comes down to a handful of choices.
Here’s where the time goes.
- Scope and structural work. Keeping your existing layout is quicker; taking out a wall or moving the island means engineering, framing, and more time.
- Custom materials. Made-to-order cabinetry and stone take the longest to arrive, which is why we get them ordered early in design.
- Design rounds. Every extra round of revisions in planning adds a few weeks before the build even starts.
- How fast decisions get made. Keep in mind that every selection you nail down up front is one that can’t stall your build halfway through.
How We Keep Your Timeline On Track
Most remodels don’t blow their timeline during the build.
They blow it because the planning got rushed, so we do the opposite.
Everything gets settled in the Project Development Agreement and written into a fixed-price contract, so the schedule we hand you is the one we work to.
We pull the permits and handle the city during design, so it’s not a separate wait tacked onto your build.
Once we break ground, you get your own Gantt chart schedule that tracks our crew, our subs, and the known unknowns like weather, inspections, and deliveries, so the plan stays grounded in what’s actually happening.
You get regular updates on it too, even when nothing’s changed, so you’re never left guessing where things stand.
And it’s the same crew and trade partners the whole way through, so nobody’s playing telephone with your plans.
Our Relaxed Elegance kitchen in Broomfield came together in about 3 months, right on the schedule we set.
Your Timeline Doesn’t Have to Be a Mystery With Bunn & Sons Custom Builders
A kitchen remodel stays on schedule when the planning gets done before the demolition, not during it.
We settle your design, selections, scope, and schedule inside a Project Development Agreement and lock it into a fixed-price contract, so the timeline we give you is one you can actually build your life around.
Fill out our contact form today or give us a call, and we’ll start with a kickoff meeting at your home where you’ll meet your project manager and designer and map out how you actually plan to live in the space.
That first conversation is where a predictable timeline really begins.
