Kitchen remodeling
Layout, cabinets, counters, flooring, lighting and ventilation, planned as one job and sequenced so each trade builds on finished work instead of tearing it out.
A kitchen is the most coordinated room in a house. In a couple of hundred square feet you have cabinets, counters, plumbing, gas or electric cooking, lighting circuits, an exhaust duct, flooring and paint, and each has to be ready before the next can start. Late decisions and poor sequencing, far more than the carpentry, are what stretch kitchen projects out and push budgets up.
C&L Property Improvements is a family-owned company based in Muskego, remodeling kitchens across Waukesha, Milwaukee and Racine counties. This page explains how the pieces fit together: layout, the honest trade-offs between cabinet and countertop options, the ventilation and permit rules, and what it is like to live without a kitchen for a while. For prices, see the kitchen remodeling cost guide.
Wisconsin requires plumbing and electrical work to be done by licensed plumbers and electricians, under their own permits where the municipality requires them. A written scope should show who is doing those parts of the job.
Where the sink, range, refrigerator and main prep counter sit relative to each other and to the doorways people walk through. Keeping fixtures where they are keeps plumbing, gas and electrical changes small. Moving them is where scope grows.
Removing cabinets, counters and flooring, then dealing with what turns up: a soft subfloor under the sink or dishwasher, old wiring, corroded supply lines, a soffit hiding a duct or a drain.
Base and wall cabinets set level and fastened to framing, with fillers and scribes fitted to walls that are rarely straight. Drawer slides and hinges are where cabinet lines differ most in daily use.
Stone and quartz tops are templated from the installed cabinets, fabricated, then installed. Laminate can often be ordered from measurements. The backsplash goes on after the counters are set.
New flooring run either under the cabinets or up to them, a choice with real consequences covered below.
General lighting for the room, task lighting over counters and the sink, and accent lighting if you want it, plus the dedicated circuits that current appliances need. The wiring itself is electricians' work.
A range hood ducted to the outdoors, with the duct route planned before the wall cabinets are ordered.
Drywall patched or replaced where walls were opened, then primed and painted. Painting near the end means one clean finish instead of touch-ups over damage from installation.
These are the two biggest material decisions in most kitchens. They are categories, not brands, and any of them can be built or installed well or badly.
Built ahead of time in standard widths and a limited range of door styles and finishes.
Standard boxes with more sizes, finishes, interior fittings and modified depths available.
Built to the room's exact dimensions by a cabinet shop.
An engineered surface of crushed stone bound with resin. It is nonporous, needs no sealing and has a consistent pattern from slab to slab.
Natural stone cut from quarried slabs, so every piece is different.
A plastic surface layer over a particleboard or similar core.
A uniform acrylic or polyester material through its full thickness, which allows integrated sinks and nearly invisible seams.
Keeping the sink, range and refrigerator in place is the single biggest way to hold down cost and time. Moving them means moving drains, supply lines, gas lines, circuits and sometimes walls, with the permits and inspections that come with them.
If the cabinet boxes are solid, level and laid out well, new doors, drawer fronts and hardware with new counters can change a kitchen at a fraction of the disruption. If the layout doesn't work or the boxes are failing, replacement is the honest answer.
Choose appliances before the cabinets are finalized. A range, hood or refrigerator that turns out a different size than planned forces cabinet changes after the order is placed. Appliances are often priced separately from contractor work, so ask whether they are in or out of the estimate.
Through an exterior wall, up through the roof, or not at all. A recirculating hood filters grease but returns heat and moisture to the room. The duct route affects the wall cabinets above the range, so it has to be settled first.
Running tile or wood under the cabinets costs more material but leaves room to change the layout later. Floating floors such as click-lock vinyl and laminate generally have to stop at the cabinets, because pinning a floating floor under heavy boxes stops it from moving as its instructions require.
Anything with a lead time, including cabinets, counters, tile, sinks, faucets and appliances, should be chosen before demolition starts. A kitchen torn out while you wait on a decision is the most expensive kind of delay.
We look at the kitchen in person, including what's under the sink and where the ducts and drains run. The scope comes to you in writing, with what's included, what's excluded and which parts the plumbing and electrical trades perform.
Cabinets, counters, fixtures and appliances chosen and ordered. For layout changes, drawings from a cabinet supplier, designer or architect define the job. Permits are applied for where required, and the scope should state who applies for each one.
The old kitchen comes out and hidden conditions are dealt with. Plumbing, electrical and duct rough-in follow, and where permits apply, inspections happen before walls are closed.
Drywall is hung, finished and primed. Flooring that runs under the cabinets goes in now.
Cabinets are set level and fastened. Stone and quartz counters are templated from the installed cabinets and then fabricated, a gap the schedule has to allow for.
Backsplash, sink and faucet, appliances, light fixtures, trim and final paint, then final inspections where required and a walkthrough together.
Years of small leaks rot the subfloor where nobody can see it. It has to be cut out and replaced before new cabinets or flooring go on top.
Some older hoods and over-range microwaves recirculate, and some ducts end in a cabinet, a soffit or the attic. Grease and moisture belong outdoors.
Usually a sign the kitchen has fewer circuits than current appliances need. An electrician should assess what the remodel needs to add.
Common in older homes. Cabinets get shimmed and scribed, and counters, tile and long runs of trim all show out-of-square corners, so the survey at the start has to measure them.
Southeast Wisconsin
Most of a kitchen's rules come from the municipal permit office and from the state's separation of the building and mechanical trades. These are the ones homeowners ask about most.
The Wisconsin Uniform Dwelling Code covers one- and two-family homes started on or after June 1, 1980, and alterations to them. For older homes, which includes most of Milwaukee, your municipality's requirements apply. Your building department can tell you which rules govern your kitchen.
Replacing cabinets or countertops alone generally needs no building permit in Milwaukee, Waukesha or Muskego. A remodel that changes walls, wiring or plumbing does. Fees vary: Milwaukee charges 1.6% of the cost of construction (minimum $150) plus a plan exam fee, Muskego charges $0.44 per sq ft (minimum $300), and Franklin bills kitchens at $0.45 per sq ft of work area (minimum $165).
In each of the local fee schedules checked for this page, plumbing and electrical permits are issued separately from the building permit. Muskego, for example, charges $70 plus $0.08 per sq ft for each trade permit on a remodel. Muskego's brochure also makes the homeowner ultimately responsible for permits, and fees for unpermitted work can be multiplied; Milwaukee may quadruple them. Ask who is applying for what before work starts.
Tearing out a kitchen disturbs painted walls, trim and sometimes windows. In a home built before 1978, paid work that disturbs 6 sq ft or more of painted surface in a room, or removes a window, is regulated by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and requires a DHS-certified lead-safe company and renovator.
ENERGY STAR lists kitchen, bath and dryer vents that dump into the attic as a problem for a contractor to fix. In a Wisconsin winter, warm, moist, greasy air in a cold attic condenses on the framing and roof deck. A remodel is the time to run the hood duct all the way outside.
Sources
Set up a temporary kitchen somewhere else in the house: the refrigerator, a microwave, a countertop cooker, and a place to wash dishes such as a laundry sink. Plan meals in weeks, not days.
The on-site work is only part of the schedule. Cabinet lead times, counter templating and fabrication, and inspection scheduling often decide when the kitchen is usable again. Ordering early is the biggest thing a homeowner controls.
Demolition and drywall sanding make dust. A proper job separates the work area with plastic barriers, covers the path in from the door and protects floors that are staying. No renovation is free of dust, but containment limits how far it travels.
The biggest cost drivers are layout changes, cabinet tier, countertop material, the appliance package and flooring. Keep a contingency for what's behind the walls, and make it larger the older the house. The kitchen remodeling cost guide covers the ranges.
A new kitchen often makes the rooms next to it look tired. If interior painting is on the list, schedule it after the kitchen work so it isn't damaged during installation.
Replacing cabinets and countertops alone generally doesn't need a building permit in Milwaukee, Waukesha or Muskego. Moving walls, adding circuits or changing plumbing does, with separate trade permits. The permits guide covers local rules and fees.
Often, if the boxes are sound, level and fastened well. Stone is heavy and unforgiving of cabinets that sag or rack. Changing the sink type or counter depth can also mean modifying the sink base.
Quartz is nonporous, consistent and never needs sealing, but its resin doesn't like hot pans. Granite handles heat and every slab is unique, but some stones need periodic sealing. Both are durable choices; it comes down to how you cook and what you want to maintain.
Tile and nail-down wood can, and it makes future layout changes easier. Floating floors generally shouldn't be pinned under cabinets, so they stop at the cabinet face with trim covering the expansion gap.
It depends on the scope, cabinet lead times and counter fabrication. Ask for a schedule that shows the order of work and the period when the kitchen is out of service, so you can plan around it.
Wisconsin requires plumbing and electrical work to be done by licensed plumbers and electricians, with their own permits where required. Ask any remodeler to show in the written scope who performs that work and how it fits the schedule.
For a like-for-like layout, cabinet suppliers typically produce layout drawings as part of an order. For a significant layout change, drawings from a designer or architect make the scope and price clear before work starts. Either way, the written scope should reference the drawings it is based on.
Related services
Kitchen Remodeling near Muskego
C&L is based in Muskego and works across Waukesha, Milwaukee and Racine counties. Local permit rules and housing stock differ from one community to the next:
Free estimates · Mon–Fri 8 a.m.–6 p.m. · Sat 9 a.m.–6 p.m.
Tell us what isn't working in your kitchen now and what you'd like to keep. The estimate is free, we look at the room in person, and the scope comes to you in writing.