Most kitchen remodels overrun because the schedule was never realistic. Here is what each phase actually takes, including the waits nobody warns you about.
Almost every kitchen remodel horror story starts the same way: someone promised six weeks and it took fourteen. Usually nobody was lying. The schedule was simply built on best-case assumptions with no allowance for the fixed waits that are part of every kitchen project. Here is a realistic version.
Planning and design: two to four weeks. This is layout decisions, cabinet selection, appliance specification, and finalising a scope. It feels like the phase you could rush, and it is the phase where rushing costs the most. A layout change after cabinets are ordered is expensive; the same change during planning is free.
Cabinet lead time: four to twelve weeks, and this runs in parallel with planning only if you order early. Stock cabinets can arrive in a couple of weeks. Semi-custom typically runs six to eight. Full custom can be twelve or more. This single number often determines your entire project timeline, and it is worth pinning down before committing to any start date.
Demolition: two to four days. Genuinely quick, and satisfying. The main variable is what turns up behind the cabinets — older Burlington homes regularly hide plumbing that was updated informally at some point, wiring that predates current code, or water damage nobody knew about. Budget a contingency here rather than pretending it will not happen.
Rough-in for electrical and plumbing: three to five days, plus inspection time if permits are involved. If you are moving a sink, adding circuits, or relocating appliances, this phase is unavoidable. Inspection scheduling is outside anyone's control and can add several days.
Drywall and paint prep: four to seven days. Hanging is fast; the coats of compound each need to dry before the next, and that drying time is not negotiable no matter how motivated everyone is.
Flooring: two to four days, depending on the material and whether the subfloor needs correction. This usually happens before cabinets so the floor runs continuously underneath them.
Cabinet installation: three to five days for a typical kitchen. This is the phase where the room stops looking like a construction site and starts looking like a kitchen, and it moves quickly when the cabinets have arrived complete and undamaged.
Countertop templating and fabrication: this is the wait nobody warns you about. Counters cannot be templated until cabinets are installed and level. Once templated, fabrication takes ten to fourteen days for stone. During that entire period you have cabinets with no work surface and no sink. There is no way around it — it is simply a fixed part of the process, and knowing about it in advance makes it far less frustrating.
Backsplash, plumbing connection, and finish trim: three to five days after counters land. Then the punch list, which is a few more days of adjustments, touch-ups, and the small items that always remain.
Added up honestly, a straightforward kitchen remodel runs ten to fourteen weeks from the day cabinets are ordered, with roughly six to eight of those weeks involving active work in your house. A project involving structural changes or fully custom cabinetry can run longer.
Two practical suggestions. First, set up a temporary kitchen somewhere else in the house before demolition — a microwave, a kettle, a fridge, and a table make the middle weeks far more bearable. Second, ask any contractor you are considering to walk you through their sequence with dates. If they cannot, or if the countertop wait is missing from their schedule, that tells you something useful.