Almost every expensive mistake in a renovation is a right thing done at the wrong moment. Here is the sequence, step by step, with the reason each one sits where it does — including the two-week hole in the middle that nobody plans for.
The floor went in last week and it looks superb. The cabinets land on Thursday. What nobody in the house knows yet is that the countertop shop will not template until those cabinets are installed and levelled, that the template is followed by eleven days of nothing, and that the sink and the backsplash are both queued behind the stone. That is not bad luck. That is the schedule, and it was set the week the order was placed.
Look at what actually goes wrong in a kitchen renovation and very little of it is craftsmanship. The tile is usually fine. The cabinets are usually square. What bites people is a correct action taken at the wrong moment: tile run up the wall before the counter exists, so the last course dies in a shadow gap that gets caulked twice a year. A dishwasher that will not come back out because the floor went in around it.
None of that takes skill to avoid — only a list, in the right order, agreed before the first wall comes down. Sequence is the one part of a renovation you can get completely right on paper, months before you own a tool.
It matters because a kitchen is a relay. Every trade waits on the one in front, so a slip does not absorb, it propagates: lose three days at rough-in and you lose your inspection slot, then the drywaller’s window, then your place in the countertop shop’s queue.
What they search at midnight “what order to renovate a kitchen” — usually typed at the exact moment two trades discover they are each waiting for the other.
The running order for a normal kitchen: same footprint or a modest change, no addition. Steps overlap in real life — a good installer trims while the electrician finishes — but the dependencies do not bend.
Book the template the day the cabinets are delivered, and the inspection the day the rough-in is finished. Both have queues you do not control.
Steps 01 to 03 are one thing: turn the room into numbers you trust before you spend anything. That is what our planner does — draw the real room, place real catalogue cabinets at the sizes that exist, check it in plan, 3D and elevation, and ask the assistant, Emma, rather than hunt through menus. It will not book your inspector. It will stop you drawing a cabinet no factory makes.
Some choices sit uncomfortably far forward. They feel like finishing touches — a sink, a hood, the colour of the floor — and they are structural, because something gets built or cut to suit them.
What they share is a manufacturing step downstream. A cabinet is made to an appliance opening. A slab is cut to a sink. A toe kick is cut to a floor. Each has to be settled before the machine runs, and “we will pick that later” is the most reliable predictor of a delay we know.
The most misunderstood thing about kitchen renovations: in the middle of every one sits a gap of one to two weeks in which very little can happen, and it is nobody being slow.
A countertop cannot be measured until the cabinets are installed, levelled and permanent, because the fabricator records the room as built — walls that are not straight, a run that is a shade long, a corner that is not quite 90°. That measurement is the template. Then the slab joins a shop queue to be cut, edged, polished and holed. In between you have base cabinets, no worktop, no sink and no dishwasher — and because so much hangs off the counter, the gap blocks a surprising amount of the job.
| Waits for the countertop | Why it cannot go first | What it holds up in turn |
|---|---|---|
| Sink & tap | Holes are cut in the shop from your actual fixtures; an undermount bonds to the stone | Running water in the kitchen |
| Final plumbing | Trap, supplies and the dishwasher drain connect to a now-permanent bowl position | The dishwasher, the disposal |
| Dishwasher | It fastens up into the counter, or to the cabinet sides where the top is stone | Nothing — but you have no dishwasher until then |
| Slide-in range | Its side lips are made to land on the finished counter | The final gas or electrical connection |
| Backsplash | The tile takes its bottom line from the counter as installed, not as drawn | Cover plates, under-cabinet lighting |
| Cover plates & devices | The finished tile has to be the surface behind them | Final electrical sign-off, where one applies |
None of it is avoidable, so plan for it rather than discovering it. Get your name into a fabricator’s book while the walls are still open, and ask what their template-to-install turnaround is running at right now — it varies by season and by material, and a shop that gives you a straight number is a good sign. If a fortnight with no worktop is genuinely unworkable, a sheet of plywood screwed lightly to the cabinet run and a plastic basin will hold the household together.
The question we are asked most, and the honest answer is that both are defensible and professionals argue about it in good faith. What is not defensible is leaving it open, because the choice changes the finished height of everything.
The safer default for tile, engineered wood and vinyl plank
The floor runs wall to wall and the cabinets sit on it. Most installers prefer this, and the reason is the dishwasher.
Reasonable when the floor is already down, or must not be wasted
Cabinets go on the subfloor; the floor is laid up to the toe kick afterwards. Nothing is buried and no trade walks on it.
With Option B, write the floor build-up on the plan — finish plus underlay — and size the dishwasher opening around it. A dishwasher is a snug fit under a standard counter already; take ½″ with flooring and another ¼″ with underlay and it goes in tilted, or not at all. Adjustable feet can raise a cabinet. Nothing raises a counter that is already down.
Laminate and click-together engineered floors are not fastened down — they float, and they expand and contract seasonally across their whole area. They must not be trapped under cabinets. A run of bases screwed through a floating floor pins it in the middle of the room, and the movement that has nowhere to go comes out as buckled seams or lifted planks somewhere else. Install on the subfloor, bring the floor up to the toe kick, and leave the expansion gap the manufacturer asks for. This one is not a preference.
A capable DIYer can do most of a kitchen. Demolition is mostly patience and a reciprocating saw. Hanging frameless cabinets is careful, methodical work rather than skilled work: find the studs, strike a level line, hang the wall cabinets first, then set the bases on their adjustable feet and screw them to each other before the wall. Backsplash tile, handles, paint, vinyl plank — all reasonable weekend work with a day of practise first. Then there are four places where we would stop, and we say that as people who make cabinets rather than people selling labour.
To be blunt about the limits of an article, this one included: nothing written for a general audience can tell you what your local code requires, whether your wall carries load, or whether your wiring is fit to extend. Those get answered by someone standing in your kitchen. An article can only say which questions to ask, and when.
People arrive expecting two weeks. For a straightforward kitchen with no structural work, four to eight weeks from the first day of demolition to the final clean is the honest range, with the cabinet lead time in front of it. You are not without a kitchen that whole stretch — but you are without a sink for much of it, and the sink is the thing people miss.
Set the temporary kitchen up the day before demolition, not the evening you discover you have nowhere to make coffee. It wants four things: the fridge, moved to the dining room or garage; a heat source, meaning a kettle, a microwave and a toaster oven or single induction hob; a washing-up station, in practice the bathroom sink or a laundry tub; and a bin plan, because renovation weeks generate an astonishing amount of packaging. Pack everything else away — whatever is left in the kitchen is under drywall dust within a day — and hang a zippered dust barrier at the doorway.
As for where the calendar slips, it is nearly always one of four things, and three of them are foreseeable.
Demolition is the point of no return: the moment it starts, you are on the clock and the family is cooking on a folding table. Everything below should be true before that morning.
If every line is true, the rest is execution in a known order. If two or three are still open, spend one more week on paper — the only week in the whole project where nobody is waiting on you. When something does go sideways mid-job, there is a chapter for that too.
Measure and design, confirm appliance models, order cabinets, demolish, complete any structural work, rough in plumbing, electrical and ventilation, pass inspection where it applies, insulate and drywall, prime and put on the first coat of paint, lay flooring if it is going in first, install cabinets, template the countertop, wait for fabrication, install the countertop, then sink and tap, backsplash, appliances, final electrical, toe kicks and trim and handles, and finally touch-up paint and the clean.
Both are defensible. Floor first gives a continuous floor, a dishwasher that can be pulled out for service years later, and freedom to change the layout without patching; it uses material you will never see and the floor has to survive the rest of the job. Cabinets first wastes nothing and keeps the new floor pristine, but the dishwasher opening has to be sized with the future floor thickness allowed for. Floating floors are the exception: they must not be trapped under cabinets, because they have to move.
The stone cannot be ordered until the cabinets are installed and level, because the fabricator templates the room that exists rather than the room on the drawing. What you should do early is choose the material, get your name into the shop's queue while the walls are still open, and buy the sink and tap so they are physically on site for the template. Expect roughly one to two weeks between template and installation.
For a straightforward kitchen with no structural work, four to eight weeks from the first day of demolition to the final clean is realistic, and the cabinet lead time sits in front of that. The largest single fixed block inside the schedule is the countertop gap between template and installation.
Longer than the demolition and shorter than the whole job. Plan on three to six weeks with no sink and no worktop for a typical renovation. A fridge, a kettle and a microwave can be running again within days of demolition; the sink is the one you wait for, because it comes back only after the countertop is installed.
Before the cabinets are ordered, and by model number rather than by category. The rough opening for a fridge, the cutout and lip of a slide-in range, the hood's duct size and the dishwasher's height all set cabinet dimensions, and cabinets are built long before appliances are delivered. Swapping models afterwards is a redesign, not a substitution.
It depends on where you live and on what you are actually doing. Replacing cabinets in the same footprint often needs nothing; moving plumbing, adding circuits, altering a wall or touching a gas line frequently does, and the rules differ between neighbouring towns. The only reliable answer comes from your local building department, and it is one phone call. Any article that gives you a firm yes or no is guessing.
After the countertop, always. The tile takes its bottom line from the counter as installed, which is never exactly the line on the drawing, and the joint between tile and counter should be caulk rather than grout so it can move. Tiling first means cutting to a surface that does not exist yet and living with a gap you fill again every year.
Many people can. Hanging frameless boxes is careful, methodical work rather than skilled work: find the studs, strike a level line, hang the wall cabinets first, then set the base cabinets on their adjustable feet, clamp them face to face and screw them to each other before screwing them to the wall through the mounting rails. What we would not take on without a licensed trade is gas, the main electrical panel, and any opening in a wall that might be carrying load.
Draw your room, place real cabinets at real sizes, and settle the appliances, the sink and the floor before anyone picks up a hammer.
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