Our 12-Step Kitchen Renovation Process
A kitchen goes wrong in the gaps between stages, not inside them. What follows is the order we work in, what happens at each point, what you decide, and what has to be fixed before anything downstream can be ordered or built.
Decisions made on paper
Everything expensive about a kitchen is decided before a tool comes out of the van. The first four stages exist to turn a conversation into a drawing, and a drawing into a priced scope you can read line by line.
Consultation
We walk the existing kitchen with you: where the bench runs short, which cupboard nobody opens, how two people move past each other, which appliances are staying. Scope comes out of that conversation — a complete renovation, a layout change, or a makeover that keeps the carcasses in place.
Measure
A site measure records wall lengths, ceiling height, floor fall, window reveals, and the position of waste, gas, water and the switchboard. Bentleigh’s older weatherboards and brick veneers are rarely square, so the measure notes the error rather than assuming it away — that tolerance is what scribes and filler panels later absorb.
Design
Quote
The quote follows the drawing line by line: carcass board, fronts, hardware, benchtop and edge profile, splashback, sink and tapware, which appliances are supplied and which are excluded, and which trades are inside the scope. Anything still provisional is named as provisional, so you can see exactly where a figure could move.
Material Selection
Demolition
Old cabinetry, benchtops and floor coverings come out, services are isolated and made safe, and the room is protected and cleared. The walls and floor are then inspected bare. Anything found behind the old kitchen — soft plaster, a waste in the wrong place, an uneven substrate — is reported and priced before it is covered up again.
Cabinetry
Plumbing & Electrical
Plumbing and electrical rough-in is completed for sink and dishwasher, cooktop and rangehood, power points and under-cabinet lighting while the runs are still accessible, with the trades sequenced around the cabinetry already fixed. Appliance specifications have to be final at this point: a change of cooktop can be a change of circuit, and a change of sink can be a change of cut-out.
Selections, strip-out and cabinetry
The middle of the job is where a kitchen becomes physical and where changes start to cost time as well as money. Selections close first, then the room comes apart, then it is rebuilt in a fixed order so each trade works on something already true.
Surfaces, fit-off and handover
The last four stages are the ones you actually see. They run quickly only because the first eight were closed properly — stone is cut to a template taken from real cabinetry, and appliances land in openings already wired and plumbed for them.
Benchtops & Splashback
Stone is templated on site, fabricated with sink and cooktop cut-outs, then installed. The splashback follows — slab, tile or glass — so the junction where bench meets wall is set once and stays set.
Installation
Appliances are connected and tested, tapware and waste are plumbed in, handles are fitted, and doors and drawers are adjusted under load. End panels and toe kicks are scribed to the floor and walls as found.
Finishing
Silicone lines, filler and shadow-line panels, cornice returns, paint touch-ups and the small scribes that separate a fitted kitchen from an installed one. Protection comes up and the room is cleaned.
Handover
We open every door with you: hinge and drawer adjustment points, care instructions for the benchtop and splashback, appliance manuals and manufacturer warranty documents, and a written list of anything still to return for.
A late change is never a small change
Moving a sink after rough-in means re-plumbing a wall that is already closed. Changing a door finish after the schedule is signed means re-ordering fronts that are already in production. Swapping a 20 mm stone for a 40 mm mitred edge changes the cabinetry heights beneath it.
So each stage closes on a written decision rather than a verbal one. You always know what is still open, what has just been fixed, and what a change would reach back and disturb. Nothing downstream is ordered against an assumption.
The same twelve stages, at different scopes
A makeover skips demolition and rough-in but keeps the measure, the drawing, the schedule and the template. A full renovation runs every stage. Each scope below sets out what is included and what it leaves alone.
Stage one starts with a conversation
Tell us the room, the suburb and what the current kitchen gets wrong. We come back with the questions that shape the measure and the drawing — layout, storage, appliances and the surfaces that will carry the budget.