How to price a kitchen renovation

Kitchens are where renovation companies make their best margins and their worst mistakes. The job is longer, the client is living around it, and two of the biggest line items — cabinets and counters — arrive on someone else's schedule.

Every figure below is a 2026 Ontario market range, before HST. It is not a price list to copy; it is the structure of a kitchen quote so you can build your own.

Where the money actually goes

Before the line items, the shape of a kitchen budget. Roughly half the money is cabinets and counters — product, not your labour. Clients rarely understand this, and it is the single most useful thing to explain on the first visit.

The line items in a kitchen quote

1. Protection, demolition and disposal

Kitchens are dusty and the client is usually still living there. Dust walls, floor protection through the traffic route, appliance removal, cabinet strip-out, and disposal. Budget $1,800–$3,000 including the bin. Removing a soffit or bulkhead is separate at $25–$40 per linear foot.

2. Structural and framing

Wall removal is its own conversation — if it is load-bearing you need an engineer's letter, a beam, temporary support and a permit. Price the engineering and permit time as real lines. Non-structural framing, bulkheads and blocking for uppers are hours, not guesses.

3. Plumbing

Sink and faucet install runs $250–$400, dishwasher hook-up $165–$280, fridge water line $100–$180. Moving a sink to a different wall is a rough-in at $550–$850 per point, plus opening and closing floors or walls. A gas line for a range runs $45–$70 per foot plus the connection.

4. Electrical

Kitchens carry more circuits than any other room and code has opinions. Pot lights $180–$280 each, split-receptacle or dedicated counter circuits $325–$500 each, under-cabinet lighting $18–$28 per foot, plus the range, fridge, dishwasher and microwave circuits. If the panel is full, a sub-panel is a real line at $900–$1,600.

5. Cabinet installation

Price per unit, not per kitchen. Uppers $80–$110 each, lowers $55–$90, corners and specialty units more because they take longer to set and shim. Then the finish work everybody forgets:

• Crown and light rail — $12–$20 per foot
• Filler strips and end panels — $25–$50 each
• Kickplates — $3–$6 per foot
• Hardware — $6–$12 per pull, and there are forty of them

On a mid-size kitchen those four lines are most of a day. Quote them.

6. Countertops

Supply and install of quartz runs $85–$140 per square foot in 2026 depending on slab; laminate is a fraction of it; natural stone can be well above. Templating cannot happen until the cabinets are set and level, and fabrication is usually one to two weeks after. That gap is fixed — put it in the schedule rather than eating it as a delay.

7. Backsplash and tile

Supply and install $18–$30 per square foot for standard tile. Mosaic, herringbone and anything needing a pattern match sit at the top or above — the material barely changes, the labour per square foot climbs steeply. Outlets in a backsplash mean cuts, and cuts mean time.

8. Flooring

LVP or laminate supply and install $9–$15 per square foot, tile $18–$30, hardwood higher. Transitions to adjoining rooms are their own line at $35–$60 each and are almost always forgotten.

9. Drywall, paint and trim

Patching after demo, ceiling repairs where the soffit came out, prime and paint, baseboard and casing. A kitchen painted properly is $700–$1,200. Ceiling work after a bulkhead removal is more than people expect.

A worked example: a standard 10×12 kitchen

Full replacement, same layout, semi-custom stock cabinets, quartz counters, no wall removal, LVP floor. Ontario, 2026, before HST.

Under about $25,000 you are refacing or replacing doors, not renovating. Over $80,000 you are into full custom cabinetry, moved walls, or high-end stone — all legitimate, all worth naming before the client hears a number.

Four lines that sink kitchen jobs

Client-supplied cabinets and appliances

Common, and it can work. But price your time for receiving, inspecting and coordinating them, and put in writing that delays or damage on goods you did not order are not your responsibility. The most common kitchen dispute in this province is a schedule blown by cabinets that came late or wrong on an order the contractor never placed.

The counter template gap

Two weeks where the kitchen is unusable and no trade is on site. Clients experience that as you disappearing. Put it in the schedule at quoting time, explain why it exists, and it stops being a complaint.

What is behind the old cabinets

Nobody quotes for the wall that was never finished behind a 1980s upper, the plumbing that was never brought to code, or the floor that stops at the cabinet line. Carry a contingency and say plainly that it exists — a client told upfront about the unknown behaves very differently from one told halfway through.

Site supervision on a six-week job

A kitchen has more trades passing through than any other renovation. Your time coordinating them is a real cost, and on a fixed price with no supervision line it comes straight out of your margin.

Quoting it in minutes

A kitchen has three times the line items of a bathroom, which is why kitchen quotes are the ones that sit on the desk for a week. The method above is not hard — it is just long, and the hours to do it properly only exist after supper.

That is what Contrax was built for. Walk the kitchen with your phone, talking as you go. The app watches the video, writes the scope trade by trade, and prices it off your own rate card — the one you set once, so a quote comes out the same whoever runs it. You read it, adjust it, and send it the same day.

It gives you a draft, not an answer. You check every line before it reaches a client — that part does not change.