Kitchen Remodel Cost
Real numbers, where each dollar goes, and a straight answer to whether your budget is enough. You do not need to fill in a form first.
Every contractor site says cost depends on your project. That is true, and it does not help you plan. So here is the actual arithmetic for a Santa Clarita kitchen, starting from published industry data rather than from a number we made up.
Two things decide almost everything. The first is whether the cabinet boxes stay or go. The second is whether the plumbing moves. Those two answers put you in one of three bands, and every finish decision after that moves the total far less than people expect.
According to the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com), which prices one fixed two hundred square foot kitchen with thirty linear feet of cabinets in its Los Angeles edition, a minor midrange remodel costs $29,765 and adds $37,768 at resale, 126.9 percent of its cost. A major midrange remodel costs $86,214 and adds $49,079, or 56.9 percent. A major upscale remodel costs $171,369 and adds $65,023, or 37.9 percent. It is not a quote, and Santa Clarita is not the whole metro, but it is a published yardstick rather than a made up range.
The percentages are the part worth reading twice. The smallest kitchen project is the only one of the three that returns more money than it costs. Every step up buys you a better kitchen and a worse return. Both are reasonable things to buy. It just helps to know which one you are signing.
Level one
The layout and the cabinet boxes stay. Everything you touch gets replaced.
No building permit for the counters or the boxes. An electrical permit only if circuits change.
Level two
Same footprint, everything new.
Electrical and mechanical permits required. Plumbing permit if fixtures change.
Level three
A wall comes down, the sink moves, an island goes in.
Permit and plan check required. Expect the longest schedule by a wide margin.
None of the figures on this page is a quote. Your number comes from the walkthrough. The report is free to read and asks you to register before it shows the city figures.
© 2025 Zonda Media, a Delaware Corporation. Complete data from the Remodeling 2025 Cost vs Value Report can be downloaded free at www.costvsvalue.com.
The line items
On a full replacement, the split below is what a typical Valencia quote looks like. It is worth knowing before you start choosing finishes, because it tells you which decisions are worth agonising over and which ones are rounding errors.
Cabinets take the largest single share of a full remodel, ahead of counters and ahead of labor. This is why the first question at the walkthrough is whether your existing boxes are solid. If they are, refacing them instead of replacing them frees up thousands for the rest of the room, and nobody who visits your house will know the difference.
Stone is priced by the slab, the cut and the edge, not by square footage alone. A waterfall island edge adds two seams and a lot of fabrication. A full height slab backsplash can cost more than the counter it sits behind. The countertops page compares the materials properly.
Demolition, framing, drywall, tile, electrical, plumbing and finish carpentry. In a small kitchen this line barely shrinks, because each trade still shows up, still sets up and still gets inspected. That is why small kitchens cost more per square foot than large ones.
Almost always supplied by you, not by the contractor, and almost always the easiest place to move the total up or down by thousands without touching the build. The contractor installs what you buy and tells you before ordering cabinets if a chosen model changes an opening.
A real line, not a hidden fee. Fees are set by the city, the contractor passes them through at cost, and builds the inspection days into the schedule rather than treating them as a surprise.
Every honest quote carries one. Nobody sees through drywall. The contractor would rather name a number for the unknown than hand you a low quote and a change order in week two.
These are the questions people actually type into Google before they call anyone. Straight answers, using the benchmark above rather than wishful thinking.
Before you compare quotes
If a quote for a kitchen with new circuits carries no permit line, either the fee is buried or the work is not being permitted. Ask which. In Santa Clarita the electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits are separate from the building permit, and California requires a licensed contractor on any job that needs a permit at all, whatever the job costs.
Removing a bulkhead soffit leaves a scar across the ceiling and down two walls. Patching, texturing and painting that is real work. It is an easy line to leave out of a low quote on an older Valencia kitchen.
Old cabinets, old counters, old flooring and the drywall all have to leave. Bins cost money and dump fees are by weight. Stone is heavy.
Once you open a wall, what you find has to meet today's requirements, not the ones in force when the house was built. On the older tracts that regularly means new circuits for the counter receptacles.
There is a good way and a bad way to cut a kitchen budget. The good way trims things you can change later cheaply. The bad way trims things buried behind cabinets.
Keep the layout. Reface instead of replacing when the boxes are sound. Choose a quartz from a lower price group rather than a smaller slab of an expensive one. Skip the full height slab backsplash and tile it instead. Buy the appliances yourself, on sale, before the job starts.
Electrical. Plumbing. Anything that ends up behind a cabinet or under a counter. Cabinet boxes, if the existing ones are soft at the sink base. The vented range hood, which is a code item, not a luxury. And the allowance for what demolition finds, because removing it from the quote does not remove it from the job.
Everything above is a benchmark. Your quote comes from measuring your room, looking at your cabinets and finding out where your plumbing runs. That visit is free, takes about an hour, and you keep the written line item quote whether or not you hire the contractor.