A-200

How a project runs

First call to final walkthrough

A kitchen takes fifteen weeks from the first phone call, and only about seven of those have anyone in your house. Here is where the other eight go.

Most remodels do not go wrong on site. They go wrong in the eight weeks before, when a cabinet order sits unconfirmed, a slab is not tagged, or a permit is filed a fortnight late. Our sequence is built to make those failures visible early, while they still cost nothing.

00
The first call
45 minutes · No charge
A real conversation about the room, the house, and the number. If what you want and what you want to spend do not meet, you find that out now rather than after you have paid us a design fee.
01
Site visit
Week 0 · No charge
We measure the room properly, work out which way the floor structure runs and what it can carry, check whether your electrical panel has room for what you want, and find where the pipes and ducts actually are. Half of what makes a remodel expensive is decided in this hour.
02
Design and drawings
Weeks 1 to 4 · Design fee, credited back
A floor plan, a drawing of every wall, and a measured drawing of every run of cabinets. Three rounds of changes are included. You approve real drawings rather than a glossy 3D render, because a render will not tell you there is a three inch filler panel beside your fridge.
03
Choosing and ordering
Weeks 3 to 8 · Budgets agreed
Every appliance, stone slab, tile, tap and light fitting chosen, ordered, delivered and checked. You see the actual slab at the yard and we tag it as yours. Tile is ordered from one batch with fifteen percent spare, so a broken one later still matches.
04
Permits
Weeks 4 to 7 · At cost
Building, plumbing, electrical and fire where required, filed with your town under our licence and our trades' licences. We do not start work on a permit we have not had back in our hands.
05
Demolition and the hidden work
Weeks 8 to 10 · Second payment
A sealed dust wall with a zip door, an air scrubber pulling dust out of the room rather than into your house, and floor protection along the whole route the crew walks. Framing, plumbing, electrical and heating, then inspections before anything is closed up.
06
Finishing
Weeks 10 to 14 · Third payment
Cabinets set and cut to fit the walls, then the stone measured off the cabinets that are actually installed rather than off a drawing, which is why the counters fit. Then tile, paint, trim, fixtures and lighting.
07
Final walkthrough
Week 15 · Final payment
You walk the room and write down everything that is not right. We work through that list for ten days. Then you get a binder with the warranties, the paint codes, the tile batch numbers, and a drawing of what is actually behind your walls.

A-210

What we do, in detail

Six services, six ranges

Full Kitchen

Down to the studs, back up to a finished room. Layout, structure, mechanicals, millwork, stone, tile, paint.

Cabinets built to your plan in our own shop rather than ordered from a catalogue, in white oak or painted maple, with drawers that glide out fully and close themselves. Your countertops are measured after the cabinets are installed, never off a drawing, which is why they fit. If a wall has to come out, an engineer designs the beam and the town inspects it.

Typical range: $95k to $225k
Programme: 10 to 16 weeks

Primary Bath

Wet rooms, curbless showers, freestanding tubs, heated floors. The parts you cannot see are the ones we sell.

Every surface the water can reach is sealed behind a waterproof membrane with the seams banded. Before a single tile goes on we plug the drain, fill the pan and leave it twenty-four hours to prove it holds. Heated floor as standard. Shower niches are set out to the tile so you never see a sliver-thin cut, and the glass is measured in your bathroom rather than ordered from the plan.

Typical range: $55k to $130k
Programme: 7 to 11 weeks

Powder Room

Small, visible, and unforgiving. The room your guests spend the most uninterrupted time looking at.

A powder room is four surfaces and nowhere to hide a mistake, so it gets the same drawings as a kitchen. Wall-hung vanities get solid timber inside the wall behind them so they never sag. Lighting is set out to flatter the mirror rather than to suit the ceiling.

Typical range: $18k to $40k
Programme: 3 to 5 weeks

Custom Millwork

Pantries, mudrooms, banquettes, bars, libraries. Built in our Ridgewood shop, finished before it ships.

Drawn, built, sanded and sprayed in our shop, then cut to fit your walls on site, because no wall in an older house is truly straight. Spraying in a clean booth rather than in a dusty house is the difference between a finish that looks like furniture and one that looks like trim.

Typical range: $12k to $85k
Programme: 6 to 12 weeks

Structural Openings

Wall removals, flush headers, pass-throughs. Engineered, permitted, and shored properly.

Every opening wider than four feet is designed by a structural engineer and stamped before we give you a price. Where the ceiling has to stay flat we hide the beam inside it. Where the span is too wide for timber we use steel. Either way the weight lands on a proper concrete footing, and we prop the floors above while the wall is out.

Typical range: Quoted per engineer
Programme: Runs inside the job

Kitchen Refresh

Same boxes, new everything else. For kitchens whose layout already works.

New doors and drawer fronts made to fit your existing cabinet boxes, new soft-close runners inside them, new stone, new backsplash and a new lighting layout. When the plan of the room already works, this gets you ninety percent of the result for about a third of the cost.

Typical range: $30k to $60k
Programme: 4 to 6 weeks

A-220

Where the money goes

A $160,000 kitchen, broken out

Nobody publishes this, which is exactly why we do. Below is a real breakdown from a mid-range Bergen County kitchen at $160,000, the kind of job we run six or seven times a year. Your numbers will move, but the shape of it will not.

Two lines are worth staring at. Cabinetry is the largest single cost and the one where the difference between stock and milled is most visible every day. Contingency is not padding. It is the money that pays for the knob-and-tube nobody could see until the ceiling came down, and on a pre-1940 house it gets used.

Cost breakdown of a typical $160,000 kitchen
Line	Share	Dollars
Cabinetry and millwork	32%	$51,200
Labour, carpentry and management	26%	$41,600
Stone, tile and glass	13%	$20,800
Appliances and fittings	11%	$17,600
Electrical, plumbing and HVAC	9%	$14,400
Contingency, held not spent	6%	$9,600
Permits, engineering and disposal	3%	$4,800

A-230

How we work

Six rules we do not bend

Nothing is demolished early
Every cabinet, slab, fixture, tile and appliance is on site and inspected before the first wall comes down. This single rule is why our jobs finish on the week we said.
One job at a time, per crew
Fourteen projects a year across two crews. Your lead carpenter is on your site every day it is open, and it is the same person from the first day to the last.
Permits, always
Every structural, plumbing and electrical change is filed and inspected. Unpermitted work becomes your problem at closing, and we will not hand you that.
Fixed price, written allowances
A line-item contract with named allowances for stone, tile and fittings. Change orders are priced and signed before the work happens, never after.
Gaps you cannot see
The gaps around every door and drawer are held to a sixteenth of an inch. It sounds like a small thing. It is the difference you notice from across the room without knowing why.
Three-year workmanship warranty
Three years on our labour, on top of whatever the manufacturer covers. We answer the phone in year three.

A-601

Tell us about your project

45 minutes · No charge

Tell us the room and the number. We will tell you if they meet.

Most of a remodel is decided before anyone picks up a tool. Forty-five minutes on the phone is usually enough to know whether the brief and the budget are in the same building, and it costs you nothing to find out.

01
You call or send the form. We answer within one business day.
02
Forty-five minutes on the phone: the room, the house, the timeline, and an honest range.
03
If it fits, we come and measure. If it does not, we tell you who does this kind of work well.

Send the details (201) 555-0184

How a project runs

The first call

Site visit

Design and drawings

Choosing and ordering

Permits

Demolition and the hidden work

Finishing

Final walkthrough

What we do, in detail

Full Kitchen

Primary Bath

Powder Room

Custom Millwork

Structural Openings

Kitchen Refresh

Where the money goes

How we work

Nothing is demolished early

One job at a time, per crew

Permits, always

Fixed price, written allowances

Gaps you cannot see

Three-year workmanship warranty

Tell us about your project