Kitchen Renovation Cost: What Drives the Budget
Two Bentleigh kitchens of identical size can sit a long way apart on cost, and the reason is rarely the cupboard count. It is the specification: how the carcasses are built, what the doors are faced in, which benchtop is fabricated and how, and whether the sink, gas and power stay where they are. Style follows those decisions. The budget is set by them.
Six decisions that move the number
Read them in this order. Each one narrows the next, and the first two decide how much of the house the job touches.
A full strip-out buys a new layout and new carcasses. Retaining sound boxes and renewing fronts, benchtop and hardware is a different job with a different total.
Moving a sink, a gas point or a power run brings plumbing and electrical into the program, plus patching to floor, wall and ceiling that nobody sees in the finished room.
Carcass specification is invisible once the doors are on, which is exactly why it is the easiest place for a cheap quote to be cheap. Moisture-resistant board, sealed edges and full-thickness backs cost more and last longer.
Door material carries the finish, the repairability and a large share of the joinery line. Grain-matching veneer across a long run, or shadowline handleless detailing, adds machining time before anything is sprayed.
Two kitchens can name the same stone and land in different places. A mitred 40 mm edge, a waterfall end and a book-matched splashback all draw more slab and more fabrication hours than a square 20 mm top on the same run.
Integration is a cabinetry cost as much as an appliance cost: a concealed dishwasher or fridge needs a custom front and a modified opening. Runner and hinge grade is the part you feel every day.
A veneer front is priced by the leaf and by the labour around it. Running the grain continuously across four tall doors means selecting from the same flitch and cutting to a set order, so offcuts rise and the sequence cannot be rearranged later. The same door in a printed finish is a fraction of the work and reads convincingly at a distance — which is the honest trade-off, not a lesser choice.
Where the money goes in a full renovation
The layout is free to change, so demolition, services and plasterwork enter the job alongside new joinery. Most of the spend sits in cabinetry manufacture and the benchtop, with trade coordination behind it.
Where the money goes in a makeover
The plan stays as built and sound carcasses are kept, so demolition and services largely drop out. Spend concentrates in the surfaces you touch and see: fronts, benchtop, splashback and hardware.
Budgets slip on timing, not taste
A decision made after the stage it belongs to costs more than the same decision made before it. Locking selections in order is the cheapest control you have.
Openings, clearances and services are set by the appliance schedule. Changing a cooktop width late means redrawn joinery and, sometimes, a re-run power point.
A full-height slab has to be drawn from the same stone at the same time as the benchtop. Deciding afterwards can mean a second slab or a different material.
Every downstream document — cabinet sizes, services marks, stone drawings — is derived from the plan. Reopening it reissues all of them.
Walls out of plumb, floors out of level and old service runs are common in Bentleigh’s interwar and post-war houses. Allow for scribing, packing and making good.
Removing a wall to open the kitchen to living is a building item with engineering, framing and ceiling repair attached — separate from the joinery figure.
Price the specification, not the picture
Once you can name the scope, the carcass, the door, the benchtop and the hardware, a quote stops being a guess and starts being a comparison. Send us what you already know and we will work through the rest of the schedule with you, line by line.