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How to Price a Kitchen Renovation in 2026 (A Builder's Step-by-Step Method)
The Room Where Everything Depends on Everything Else
A kitchen looks straightforward next to a full renovation. It is one room. But it is the most interdependent room in the house to price, because almost nothing can happen until the cabinetry is made, and the cabinetry cannot be made until a dozen decisions are locked.
That is what makes kitchens dangerous to price. It is not usually the cost of any one item that hurts you. It is the sequencing, the long lead times, and the decisions that stall the whole job while your program bleeds. Price the items and miss the workflow, and a job that looked profitable turns into weeks of standing around waiting for a benchtop.
Pricing a kitchen properly means costing the trades and materials, yes, but also pricing the reality of how a kitchen actually gets built: in a strict order, around long lead items, with the client living without a kitchen the whole time.
TL;DR
Kitchens are driven by cabinetry and its lead time, not by floor area
Price by trade and stage, and build the cabinetry lead time into your program
Stone benchtops need a template after cabinets are installed, which adds a fixed gap you must plan for
Appliances and fixtures are usually client-supplied, so allowances and responsibility need to be crystal clear
Contingency and clear exclusions cover the surprises hiding behind old kitchen walls
Why Kitchens Are Priced on Sequence, Not Size
Most rooms you can price roughly on what goes in them. A kitchen you have to price on the order things happen, because the order is where the cost and the risk live. Cabinetry is made off site while other work waits. Stone cannot be templated until cabinets are in. Plumbing and electrical fit-off cannot finish until the stone is on. Miss how these depend on each other and you will price the parts correctly and still lose money on the gaps between them.
Builder and Kitchen Renovator
My first few kitchens I priced the cabinets, the trades, the stone, all fine. What I did not price was the two weeks the job sat still waiting for the benchtop template and install. That dead time was mine to carry. Now I build the lead times into the price and the program, and kitchens are one of my best earners.
The Step-by-Step Method
Step 1: Lock the Scope and the Selections Early
Kitchens live or die on decisions being made on time. Before you can price properly, you need to know the layout, the cabinetry, the benchtop material, the appliances, the splashback and who is supplying what. Every undecided item is a future delay, because in a kitchen one late decision holds up everything downstream of it.
"New kitchen" is not a scope. A defined layout with named finishes and a clear supply split is. This is why a proper scope of work matters even more in a kitchen than elsewhere: it is also your defence against the delays that eat your margin.
Step 2: Price by Trade and Stage
Break the job into trades and price each one. A kitchen touches more of them than people expect.
Trade or stage | Commonly missed |
|---|---|
Demolition and strip-out | Removing old cabinetry and appliances, disposal |
Plumbing rough-in | Relocating sink, dishwasher, fridge water line |
Electrical rough-in | New circuits for appliances, extra power points, lighting |
Carpentry and framing | Wall repairs, bulkheads, packing for cabinetry |
Plastering and patching | Making good walls and ceilings after strip-out |
Cabinetry supply and install | Lead time, delivery, adjustments on site |
Benchtop template and install | The fixed gap between cabinet install and stone |
Splashback | Tiling or glass, measured after benchtops |
Plumbing fit-off | Tap, sink, dishwasher connection, testing |
Electrical fit-off | Appliances, rangehood, lighting, certification |
Flooring | Coordination with cabinetry, thresholds |
Painting | Prep and finish around new cabinetry |
Clean and handover | Final clean, appliance testing, defects |
Your coordination time | Managing the sequence, the most under-priced item |
The cost is not just in the list. It is in coordinating this exact order, because most of it cannot be reshuffled.
Step 3: Respect the Cabinetry Lead Time
This is the number one thing that catches builders on kitchens. Cabinetry is made off site and it takes weeks. Nothing much progresses until it is installed. If you price the job as if it flows straight through, you will be wrong about both the timeline and your costs.
Get the cabinetry order in early, confirm the lead time in writing, and build that time into your program and your price. The client needs to understand the kitchen is not a two-week job even if the on-site work only adds up to two weeks, because the making of the cabinets happens before anyone lifts a tool on site.
Step 4: Plan for the Benchtop Gap
Stone and engineered benchtops cannot be measured until the cabinets are physically installed. The fabricator templates off the real cabinets, then fabricates, then installs, and that is usually a fixed gap of several days to a couple of weeks with the kitchen unusable in between.
You cannot compress this, so you must plan and price around it. That means sequencing the trades so the gap is not pure dead time where possible, and setting the client's expectations that there is an unavoidable pause between cabinets going in and stone landing. Price your time to manage that period, because you are still coordinating even when the site looks quiet.
Step 5: Get Appliances and Supply Split Dead Clear
Kitchens involve more client-supplied items than any other room: appliances, sometimes the sink and tapware, sometimes the cabinetry hardware. This is a rich source of disputes and delays.
For every item, state clearly who supplies it, who installs it, and by when it must be on site. If the client is supplying appliances, their late delivery is not your delay to absorb, and your scope should say so. Where selections are not final, put a written allowance with a dollar figure on each, so an upgrade becomes a simple variation rather than an argument.
Step 6: Cost Labour and Trades for the Real Sequence
Get current written prices from each trade for the exact scope, and make sure they have quoted the same job you are selling the client. Kitchens involve multiple return visits: plumbers and electricians rough in early, then come back to fit off after stone. Price those return visits, because a trade coming back a second time costs more than a single hit.
Factor in the occupied-house reality too. The client has no kitchen while you work, which creates time pressure and usually means protecting the rest of the house from dust and traffic.
Step 7: Add Overheads, Then Margin, Not Markup
Once your costs are built, add your overheads as a percentage of turnover, then apply your target margin properly. Remember margin and markup are not the same number: adding 20 percent markup does not give you a 20 percent margin. If that distinction is fuzzy, it is worth reading markup vs margin once, because getting it wrong quietly underprices every kitchen you quote.
Step 8: Price the Unknown
Old kitchens hide things. Once you strip out you commonly find water damage behind cabinets, old leaking plumbing, wiring that will not meet current requirements for the new appliance load, and walls or floors that are badly out of level and need work before cabinets can go in.
Carry a contingency for the small surprises, and exclude the big ones in writing: structural or subfloor repairs found once opened up, electrical upgrades beyond the quoted scope, asbestos, and levelling beyond a stated tolerance. State clearly they will be quoted as variations if they appear.
The Bottom Line
Kitchens are not hard to price because the items are expensive. They are hard because everything depends on the sequence, and the sequence is ruled by cabinetry lead time and the benchtop gap. Price by trade, build the lead times into both your program and your number, get the supply split and allowances crystal clear, then add overheads, apply true margin, and protect yourself with contingency and exclusions. Do that and the room that stresses most builders becomes one of the most reliable earners you have.
Where Jobdocs Fits
A kitchen quote has a lot to communicate: scope, a long list of inclusions and exclusions, allowances, a supply split, and a realistic timeline. Jobdocs turns all of that into a clear, professional quote or proposal the client can actually follow, with your terms and payment stages built in. You price the job. Jobdocs makes sure nothing important gets lost in a messy document.
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