How long does a kitchen renovation take in Vancouver? A standard gut renovation with the layout unchanged runs 6 to 9 weeks on site. An open-plan conversion involving a structural wall runs 9 to 12 weeks. Add 4 to 8 weeks for the City permit before construction starts, and a realistic total from first contact to a finished kitchen is 14 to 20 weeks. Construction is the shortest phase. The permit and the cabinet order are the longest waits.
Timeline by Scope
The single biggest predictor of how long a kitchen takes is whether anything moves.
| Scope | On site | Permit | Realistic total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic refresh, nothing relocated | Short, no rough-in phase | Generally none | Driven by material lead time |
| Gut renovation, layout unchanged | 6 to 9 weeks | 4 to 8 weeks | 14 to 20 weeks |
| Open-plan conversion, structural wall | 9 to 12 weeks | 4 to 8 weeks | 16 to 22 weeks |
| Strata unit, any permitted scope | As above | 4 to 8 weeks, after strata | Add 4 to 6 weeks of strata approval first |
A cosmetic refresh replaces cabinet doors, countertops, and fixtures at their existing locations without touching plumbing or electrical. There is no rough-in phase, no inspection sequence, and generally no permit, so the on-site work is short. What actually sets the schedule is material lead time rather than labour, which is a different constraint from every other tier on this list.
A gut renovation with the layout unchanged is the common case. Demolition, plumbing and electrical rough-in, inspection, drywall, cabinetry, countertop templating and installation, tile, fixtures, and appliances. Six to nine weeks on site.
An open-plan conversion adds a structural wall removal, which adds a structural engineer, a beam design, and the sequencing that goes with temporary support. Nine to twelve weeks.
What the Permit Adds
A permit is required whenever plumbing, gas, or electrical work is in the scope. Cosmetic updates that leave plumbing where it is typically do not need one.
City of Vancouver review runs 4 to 8 weeks. That is calendar time before construction can start, and it is the phase most homeowners leave out when they picture the project. The permit fee for a residential kitchen is typically $500 to $1,500 and is included in the estimate.
Permit review timing also varies by municipality across Metro Vancouver, from 3 to 5 weeks in Surrey to 4 to 8 weeks in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and both North Vancouver authorities. Where the permit is the critical path, that difference is real calendar time, and the municipal cost and permit comparison sets out the differences by city.
The permit also structures the middle of the project. Rough-in plumbing and rough-in electrical are inspected before walls close. Drywall cannot go up until those inspections pass. A failed or rescheduled inspection stops everything behind it, which is why the inspection calendar rather than the trade calendar governs the middle weeks.
Working without a required permit does not save time in any meaningful sense. It creates a disclosure obligation at resale and can require the work to be opened up or removed.
Strata Approval Adds More
If the kitchen is in a strata unit, there is a step before the permit, and it is not optional.
Strata council approval is required before the municipal permit application is submitted. It typically takes 4 to 6 weeks, and the reason is structural rather than bureaucratic: councils decide alteration requests at scheduled meetings, most commonly monthly. A complete package submitted just after a meeting waits for the next one. An incomplete package restarts the cycle.
The package the council reviews is a document set, not a description: scope, drawings or a marked-up plan, the contractor's business licence, WorkSafeBC registration, liability insurance, flooring and underlay specifications with sound ratings, and the schedule. Assembling that properly the first time is the difference between four weeks and ten.
Strata bylaws also constrain the work in ways that affect the schedule directly. Construction hours are typically 8 am to 5 pm on weekdays, with weekend work prohibited in most mid-rise and high-rise buildings, so noisy trades lose the evenings and weekends a detached-house project can use. Elevator booking runs in two to four hour windows with two weeks of notice. The practical effect is that a kitchen taking 10 days of trade work in a house takes 14 to 16 days in a condo. Plumbing relocation is frequently restricted at the common-property wet wall, which is a design constraint rather than a schedule one, but discovering it late forces a redesign that is very much a schedule problem.
The full council process is set out in the strata renovation approval guide.
Material Lead Times
The delay that surprises people most is not a trade. It is a cabinet order.
Cabinetry is ordered on a confirmed site measure, which cannot happen until demolition and framing are complete and the walls are where they will finally be. Ordering off a drawing risks a cabinet run that does not fit the built condition. That sequencing means the cabinet lead time lands in the middle of the project rather than before it, and it is the item most likely to leave a kitchen sitting empty waiting for a delivery.
Countertops follow the same logic and add their own wait. Templating happens after cabinets are installed and levelled, and fabrication follows templating. That is a gap of days to weeks between a kitchen that looks nearly finished and a kitchen with work surfaces.
Custom and semi-custom cabinetry carries the longest lead times, and specialty items compound it. Custom millwork that once arrived in weeks now commonly runs months. Imported plumbing fixtures and specialty lighting run long as well. Appliances vary enormously by model, and a single back-ordered appliance can hold a final inspection.
The practical response is to confirm availability before demolition begins rather than after. A project that knows its cabinet lead time on day one can sequence around it. One that discovers it at site measure has already lost the weeks.
Living Without a Kitchen
The timeline that matters to a household is not the contractor's schedule. It is the number of weeks without a working kitchen, and that is longer than the construction phase suggests.
The kitchen goes out at demolition and does not come back until countertops are installed and the sink is reconnected. On a gut renovation with the layout unchanged that is most of the 6 to 9 weeks, and the gap between installed cabinets and a usable work surface catches people out, because the room looks finished and is not.
A temporary kitchen makes the difference between manageable and miserable. A working fridge relocated to another room, a microwave and a kettle on a folding table, and a plan for washing up somewhere other than the bathroom sink covers most of it. Where the laundry room has a sink, it becomes the interim kitchen.
Dust control matters more than people expect on a kitchen project specifically, because the kitchen usually opens onto living space rather than being a closed room. Sealed barriers at the openings and covered floor protection along the route the crew uses keep the rest of the house usable.
Two scheduling decisions help. Booking the demolition start so it does not land immediately before a holiday or a period when the household needs to host avoids the worst of it. And confirming the countertop template date as soon as cabinets are ordered gives a firm marker for when the kitchen returns, rather than an estimate that drifts.
How to Compress the Timeline
Most of the available time savings sit before construction, not during it.
Do not change the layout. Keeping the sink and the appliance runs where they are avoids plumbing relocation, which can avoid a permit entirely on a lighter scope and removes the structural question altogether.
Start the permit application early and submit it complete. Incomplete applications go into a review cycle and come back out again, which costs more than the time saved by submitting fast.
Submit the strata package six to eight weeks ahead of the intended start, complete on the first attempt, timed against the council's meeting calendar rather than against your own.
Select and confirm materials before demolition. Cabinetry, countertop material, tile, fixtures, and appliances all chosen and confirmed available, so the only wait is the manufacturing time you already knew about.
Decide finishes once. Mid-project selection changes ripple into orders that were already placed and are the most common self-inflicted delay.
Accept a realistic sequence. Rough-in inspection before drywall, site measure before cabinet order, cabinet installation before countertop template. None of those can be reordered, and a schedule that pretends otherwise is a schedule that slips.
What is genuinely not compressible is the inspection sequence, the cabinet lead time, and the countertop fabrication window. A contractor promising a full gut in three weeks is either quoting a cosmetic refresh or has not counted the parts of the project that are not theirs to control.
The full kitchen scope, including what a line-item quote covers, is on the kitchen renovation service page. Where the kitchen is part of a larger project, sequencing across trades is covered on the full home renovation page.