Kitchen Remodeling & Cabinets
Kitchens are the most expensive room per square foot to remodel and the one where the budget most often gets spent in the wrong order. People replace everything when the layout was the actual problem, or move plumbing across the room when the cabinets alone would have changed how it feels.
The first visit is worth more here than anywhere else in the house. Before anything is quoted, it is worth separating what genuinely bothers you from what is simply old.
Three levels of kitchen work
Most kitchens fall into one of these, and knowing which one you are in changes the number substantially.
Refresh — cabinets stay where they are and get restored, refaced or repainted; countertops and hardware change; walls and floor get redone. The layout does not move, so plumbing and electrical stay put. It is the best value in kitchen work by a wide margin, and it is what a surprising number of kitchens actually need.
Replacement — new cabinets in the existing footprint, new countertops, new flooring, new finishes. More expensive than a refresh, still no structural or plumbing relocation.
Reconfiguration — walls or the layout change: an island goes in, a wall opens to the living room, the sink moves. Everything above gets more expensive, because plumbing, electrical and often framing move with it. Sometimes it is entirely worth it. It should be a decision, not a drift.
Cabinets: restore or replace
Older cabinets are frequently built better than what replaces them — solid frames, real joinery. If the boxes are sound and the layout works, restoring or refacing them and changing doors, hardware and finish gets most of the visual result for a fraction of the cost.
Replacement is the right call when the boxes are water-damaged or sagging, when the layout genuinely does not work, or when you are gaining significant storage. We will tell you which one you are looking at after seeing them — it is not a judgment we can make from a photo.
The sequence, and why there is a wait in the middle
Countertops are templated off installed cabinets, not off drawings. That means: cabinets go in, the countertop is measured, then there is a fabrication gap of a week or two, then it is installed and the plumbing is reconnected.
Everything else plans around that pause. Paint and wall work happen before cabinets. Flooring goes down before or after depending on the type. Backsplash goes on after the countertop, because it sits on it.
What you can and cannot use
The kitchen is out of service for part of the project — the stretch between removing the old counters and installing the new ones is unavoidable. What we can do is tell you exactly which days those are, and keep the sink out of service for as short a window as the fabrication schedule allows.
People often set up a temporary kitchen elsewhere in the house for that stretch: microwave, kettle, fridge if it can be moved. It is worth planning before demolition day rather than the morning of.
Where kitchens fit into a bigger project
Kitchen work often arrives as part of a full remodel, a rental turnover, or alongside a bathroom so the disruption happens once instead of twice. If you are considering more than one room, say so at the first visit — it usually changes the sequence and sometimes the cost.
Across the Bay Area
We remodel kitchens in San Rafael, Tiburon, Mill Valley and across Marin, in San Francisco, and out through Berkeley, Orinda, Walnut Creek and Vallejo.
Call and describe the kitchen: rough size, what bothers you about it, and whether you want the layout to change. Photos of the cabinets help — whether they are worth keeping is usually the single biggest fork in the budget.