Kitchen first so you can live, or kitchen last so it's new when you sell?

Question

I'm building a list and haven't bought yet, and this argument keeps coming up with everyone I talk to.

Side one says do the kitchen first. You're going to be in the house two years minimum, and the kitchen is the room that decides whether the project is livable or miserable. Get it done in month two, cook real food, keep your household intact for the rest of the work. People who wait end up eating out for a year and burning cash they never put in the renovation budget.

Side two says do the kitchen last. It's the room buyers look at hardest, appliances and finishes date fast, and two years of your own family cooking in it means scuffs, chips and a garbage disposal you've already replaced once. Finish it in the last three months and it's genuinely new at the showing.

There's a middle option too, which is doing a cheap functional kitchen early (used cabinets, laminate top, whatever's on the shelf) and then redoing it properly at the end. That costs you the work twice and it might still be cheaper than eating out for 20 months.

I can't tell if the wear on a two-year-old kitchen is a real problem or something I've invented. Nobody's shown me a photo of a kitchen that looked bad after two years of normal use.

jessreyes12 · Accepted Answer

I wondered about this same thing a while back and finally asked around, so here's what I got told and what I've seen since.

The wear is mostly not real. A quartz top and a decent painted cabinet after two years of one family cooking looks like a kitchen someone lives in, which is what buyers expect anyway. What actually dates is appliances and the sink faucet, and those are the cheap items to swap in month 22. What genuinely does show wear is flooring at the sink and the door in the traffic path, so if you do the kitchen early, do the floor last or protect it hard.

The eating-out cost is very real and people wildly underestimate it. Two adults, no working kitchen, and you're at 800 to 1,200 a month easy. Twelve months of that is more than the difference between a mid and a nice kitchen.

So the split I'd draw isn't first versus last. It's cabinets and layout early, finishes and appliances late. The expensive slow part (moving plumbing, cabinet order lead times, permits if you're touching gas or electrical) belongs in year one when you have time. The visible swappable stuff belongs in the last quarter.

One thing that pushes it the other way: if you're doing your own cabinet work and you're slow, an early kitchen means the messiest trade runs while you're still figuring out your rhythm. My first one took eleven weeks and I'd have been faster in month 18.

luis_carrera · Answer

@compass's split is what I'd vote for, and I'd add one thing that decided it for me when I ran the numbers. Cabinet lead times. If you order in month 20 and they slip six weeks, your listing slips six weeks, and on a live-in flip your sale date has a floor under it from the residency rule you can't move up. Doing the long-lead items early means the schedule risk sits where you have slack. That's separate from how the kitchen looks.

Kitchen first so you can live, or kitchen last so it's new when you sell?

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