Kitchen remodeling in Charlotte

The kitchen in a 1938 Dilworth bungalow we worked on last year was nine feet by eleven, closed off from the dining room by a plaster wall with horsehair in the mix, and lit by a single fixture in the center of the ceiling. The owners did not want a great room. They wanted to see out the back window while they cooked and a place to set down a grocery bag without setting it on the stove. That is most of what a kitchen remodel actually is: a short list of specific complaints, solved in the order they bother you most.

Refresh, Replace, or Reimagine

We use three words for scope because clients need to know which conversation they are having before they see a number. Refresh keeps your layout and swaps surfaces, cabinet fronts, the counter, the backsplash, the lighting, and the faucet. Replace keeps your footprint but takes the room to the studs, new cabinet boxes, new plumbing and electrical runs, new floor. Reimagine moves a wall or moves plumbing, which usually means opening a kitchen to a dining room or relocating a sink away from where a 1998 builder put it. None of the three is better than the others. A Refresh on a kitchen with good bones is often the right call, and we will tell a client that even when a Reimagine would bill higher. Ranges and timelines for each live on the quiz, which takes three taps and texts you the range.

The house tells us where to start

Charlotte does not have one kind of kitchen problem. A 1920s–40s bungalow in Dilworth, Plaza Midwood, or Elizabeth usually has a small, closed kitchen behind plaster walls and a floor joist layout that was never meant to carry a six-foot island. A 1960s–70s ranch in Cotswold or Madison Park tends to have a galley kitchen wedged between two load-bearing walls, which changes the Reimagine conversation into a structural one before it becomes a design one. A 1990s–2000s builder home in Ballantyne, Huntersville, or Waxhaw usually shows up with oak cabinets, a soffit dropped for cabinet lighting that was never installed, and 12x12 beige tile that nobody chose on purpose. We walk the house before we sketch anything, because the era tells us what is behind the drywall before we open it.

A kitchen you can still cook in

Demo day does not mean take-out for ten weeks. Before a cabinet comes off the wall, our crew sets up a temporary kitchen elsewhere in the house: a refrigerator, a microwave, and a utility sink, usually in a dining room, garage, or basement, depending on what the house has to offer. It is not fancy, but it means you can make coffee and reheat dinner without unpacking a box every night.

Nothing comes out until it can go back in

We do not demo a kitchen and then wait on a cabinet order. Cabinets, tile, countertop templates, and fixtures are confirmed and sitting in our shop on South Boulevard before a single cabinet comes off your wall. It is a small operational rule with a large effect: the day count in your contract holds because we are not waiting on a supplier mid-project, and if a delay is ours anyway, the date promise pays out at a daily until we hand you the keys.

Full detail on each phase is on the Dovetail Method page.

What changes the price, and what does not

A signed change order changes the price and the date, in writing, with the cost and the added days on one page. What does not change the price: rot behind a dishwasher, old cloth-wrapped wiring, a junction box someone buried in a wall in 1997. We carry a contingency inside the fixed number for exactly that, and if we find something, you get a photo and a phone call, not a surprise invoice.

What we will not do

• We will not start demo before your selections are ordered and confirmed.
• We will not hand your project to a rotating cast of project managers. One person, contract to walk-through.
• We will not quote a kitchen remodel without walking the house first, even for a straightforward Refresh.
• We will not move a wall or a gas line without a Mecklenburg County permit and an inspection, regardless of schedule pressure.

Cabinetry, counters, and the rest of the kitchen

A kitchen remodel is really several trades stacked on top of each other. If you already know cabinetry is the piece you care most about — stock versus custom, drawer boxes, finish durability — that is its own page, worth reading on its own: custom cabinetry.

Whatever era your kitchen was built in, the first conversation is free: a 60-minute design consult in your home, where we measure, ask what is actually wrong with the room, and point you at the planner for a range before you commit to anything.

Questions about this