Three questions that decide your entire kitchen remodel.
Settle these before you look at a single door sample. Almost every kitchen project that goes wrong went wrong because one of them was never asked properly.
Kitchen remodels go wrong in predictable ways, and almost all of them trace back to three questions that were never asked properly at the start. Get these settled before you look at a single door sample and the rest of the project becomes ordinary.
Question 1: Are the walls moving?
This determines what kind of project you are actually buying.
A kitchen rebuilt inside its existing walls is a finishes and services project. Demolition, some electrical and plumbing, cabinetry, worktops, appliances, floor. Predictable, and priceable with reasonable confidence.
A kitchen opened into the living space is a structural project. The wall between them is very often load-bearing, which means an engineered beam sized for the load above, posts that land somewhere capable of carrying them, a continuous load path down through the floors to a footing, temporary shoring while the work happens, and an engineer's involvement before anyone prices it.
Both are called "a kitchen remodel." They are not the same job, they do not cost the same, and they do not take the same amount of time. The Lakewood kitchen documented on this site was deliberately rebuilt inside its existing footprint — that was the right answer for that house, and knowing it early is what kept it straightforward.
Ask early, not late. Whether a wall is load-bearing is a structural question with a definite answer. A contractor who says "it is probably fine" before anyone has looked above the ceiling is guessing with your money.
Question 2: Is the water moving?
Relocating the sink, the dishwasher or the range is far more expensive than replacing them where they already are — and the cost is not in the fixture.
Moving a sink means moving supply and, more importantly, drainage. Drainage needs fall, and fall needs somewhere to go. In a house on a slab, that can mean cutting concrete. Over a crawlspace or basement it means working in the floor structure below. Adding a sink or a second dishwasher to an island is the classic version of this: it looks like a layout preference on a drawing and behaves like a plumbing project on site.
Gas has a similar profile. Moving a range across the room means a new line run, and depending on the route, opening finished surfaces you were not planning to touch.
None of this is a reason not to do it. It is a reason to decide it early, while it is a line on a drawing rather than a change order in week three.
Question 3: Are you living here while it happens?
Most people are, and it changes the job more than they expect.
A kitchen is the room you cannot easily do without. The project needs a plan for where you wash up, where you cook, and where the fridge lives for six weeks. It needs dust containment that genuinely seals rather than a sheet taped across a doorway, because kitchen demolition produces fine dust that will otherwise reach every room in the house. And it needs the site cleaned at the end of each day, because you are going to walk through it at seven in the morning.
On the Lakewood project the build ran behind sealed barriers so the family kept the rest of the house. That is a real cost line on an estimate, and it buys something real. Ask any contractor quoting your kitchen how they intend to handle it. The specificity of the answer tells you whether they have thought about it or are hoping you will not ask.
What these three questions do
They convert the two things that most often blow up a kitchen budget — structure and plumbing relocation — from mid-project surprises into decisions made on paper. And they surface the thing that most often makes a kitchen remodel miserable even when it goes well, which is living through it badly.
Everything else — cabinet doors, worktop material, handles, tile — is a preference. Preferences are the enjoyable part, and they are far more enjoyable once the three questions above have real answers.
How we start
AAA Home Improvements has been building on the Front Range for 25 years, and we do the structural side ourselves rather than subcontracting it out. On a kitchen that matters, because question one is answered by the same team that will build the answer.
We ask for your address first, because the jurisdiction reviewing your permit shapes what is possible. Then we look at what is standing above the wall you want gone.
Planning a kitchen remodel?
Tell us whether the walls are moving and whether you will be living here. We will tell you what kind of project it actually is.
Start My Free Estimate →Or call (720) 637-2060