Kitchens
Kitchens drawn before anyone swings a hammer.
The hardest room in the house to get right and the most expensive to redo. We draw the layout, price the whole scope in writing, then build to that drawing.
A kitchen is a drawing problem before it is a shopping problem
Most kitchen projects go wrong in the same place. Someone picks a cabinet line, a countertop and an appliance package, then asks an installer to make those three things fit a room nobody measured. The order arrives, the filler strips get wider, the range hood lands off center, and the fix costs more than the drawing would have.
We work the other way around. The room gets measured, the layout gets drawn, and the scope gets priced in writing before anything is ordered. That drawing settles the questions that are expensive to answer late: how much aisle you have between the island and the range, where the refrigerator door swings, whether the pantry run steals the window wall, how tall the upper cabinets can go before the crown hits the ceiling line.
That is the same scope the renovation catalog lists for a kitchen: layout drawings, cabinetry, counters, backsplash, a lighting plan, appliance rough-in, and the trim that ties it together. One scope document, one fixed price, one crew working through it in order.
Three decisions set your number
Kitchen budgets look unpredictable from the outside. They are not. Nearly all of the spread between a mid five figure kitchen and a low six figure kitchen comes from three decisions, and all three are decided at the drawing stage rather than at the showroom.
- Does plumbing or gas move. Keeping the sink and the range on their existing walls keeps the job inside finishes. Moving either one opens the floor or the ceiling below and brings a licensed plumber into the schedule.
- Does a wall come out, and is it structural. Removing a partition is a day. Removing a bearing wall means a beam, a load path down to the footing, and a stamped detail if the span runs past what the prescriptive framing tables in the adopted code allow.
- What cabinet tier. Stock, semi custom and full custom cabinetry can differ by a factor of three across the same footprint, before a single countertop is chosen.
The load path and stamped detail note follows the permit submittal topic in the NC code and permit guide.
What a Triangle kitchen costs
These are the same ranges behind the cost estimator, published here as plain text so you do not have to fill in a form to see a number. They are per square foot of kitchen, and they cover design, permits, labor and finishes at the level named.
Read the floor before the ranges. A kitchen renovation at this scope starts at $35,000 whatever the room measures, because a small kitchen still needs the same trades, the same inspections and the same drawings as a large one. The floor only binds on a small room. Below about 140 square feet at builder grade the per square foot math falls under $35,000, and the floor becomes the number.
| Finish level | Per square foot | A 200 sq ft kitchen |
|---|---|---|
| Builder grade | $250 to $400 | $50,000 to $80,000 |
| Mid range | $400 to $700 | $80,000 to $140,000 |
| High end | $700 to $1,100 | $140,000 to $220,000 |
| Luxury | $1,100 to $1,800 | $220,000 to $360,000 |
Ballpark ranges from our own North Carolina work, current for 2025 to 2026. They do not include land, site prep over 10 percent, or major structural surprises. Final scope is what determines cost, so use this as a sanity check and not as a bid.
Where the material comes from
Tile and stone come from Daltile, MSI and Floor & Decor Pro. You pick from their catalogs and we handle ordering and delivery to the job site, so the lead time sits on our schedule instead of on your kitchen table.
Trim and millwork come from Guy C. Lee Building Materials in Clayton, NC, at contractor pricing. That matters on a kitchen more than people expect. The crown that dies into a cabinet run, the base that returns at the toe kick and the casing around a new pass through are what make a kitchen read as built rather than assembled.
Every layout gets drawn before the tile is set, which is the same discipline the tile scope follows. Cuts land where you want them, the backsplash courses line up with the range, and nobody discovers a sliver tile behind the faucet on install day.
How the job runs, and how long you lose the room
The sequence is the same one every renovation scope follows. You tell us what you want, we send a scope document and a fixed price within two business days, you review the line items and approve, then the crew works through the scope in order and we walk the finished job together before we call it done.
Downtime depends on which of the three decisions above you made. A kitchen that keeps its plumbing and takes no walls out runs on the shorter end. A kitchen that moves the sink, opens a bearing wall and waits on a permit inspection runs on the longer end. We tell you which one you have before the scope is signed, not after demo, and we stage the work so you keep a sink and a working outlet as long as the sequence allows.
If the project grows past a fixed scope renovation into a full structural rework, we bring a general contractor partner in and run it as a joint build. You keep one point of contact either way.
Questions we get asked
- Do I need a permit to renovate a kitchen?
- Usually yes, at least for the electrical and plumbing work, and certainly if a wall moves or the layout changes. Requirements vary by jurisdiction across the Triangle, so we confirm with the permit office that covers your address before we file. Our guide to building permits in the Triangle walks through what a residential submittal has to contain.
- Can you just draw the kitchen and let my contractor build it?
- Yes. That is the permit drawings service. You get a drawn layout and a permit ready set, your builder prices and builds it. See permit drawings for what is in the set.
- Can you move the kitchen to a different room?
- Sometimes it is the right answer and sometimes it costs more than it returns. That decision belongs to a whole-home conversation rather than a kitchen one, because it touches plumbing runs, the floor structure and usually two other rooms. See whole-home renovation.
- Do you supply the appliances?
- You choose them, and we plan the rough-in around the models you choose. Appliance dimensions, clearances and venting requirements go into the drawing set, which is why we ask for the model numbers before cabinetry is ordered rather than after.
- What does the $35,000 floor actually cover?
- It is the point below which a kitchen renovation stops being worth doing as a drawn, permitted, fixed price job. Demolition, disposal, the trades, the inspections, the drawings and the finish work all carry a fixed component that a smaller room does not reduce.
Keep reading
Tell us about the kitchen.
Send the room, the goal and a rough budget. We reply within two business days with a scope and a price, not a sales call.
Start a kitchen quote