A kitchen, three bathrooms and a living room wall. Roughly three months of your home being a job site — ten to twelve weeks, if decisions are made promptly. This page explains what happens, in what order, and exactly what the two of you need to decide before it can happen.
Your decisions are due weeks before you'd ever expect them.
Cabinets take 8 to 12 weeks to build. Countertops can't even be measured until the cabinets are standing. A tap you choose in week five arrives in week nine, and the wall it mounts to was closed in week three. Almost every renovation that goes badly goes badly for one reason: someone decided something late. Decide early and this project will feel calm.
Sam is an experienced project manager who knows this job — the rooms, the fixtures you chose, the schedule, the strata. Ask anything: what a word means, whether something is normal, or what to say to your contractor. There is no such thing as a silly question here, and it's always awake.
Hello Drummond and Karen. I'm Sam. I've read through your whole project, so you don't need to explain anything to me — I know the kitchen, the three bathrooms, the living room wall, and the taps and toilets you've chosen.
Ask me whatever's on your mind. If something on site has you worried, tell me what you're seeing and I'll tell you straight whether it's normal. And if you'd rather not have an awkward conversation with your contractor, I'll write the message for you.
These are the sign-offs your contractor is waiting on. The bar under each one shows why the deadline is what it is: the dark block is the day it gets installed, and everything before it is time you cannot buy back.
This one is done. You've selected the Riobel package for the bathroom taps and showers, with Kohler toilets and sinks, and the Kohler kitchen sink and tap. The quote from The Ensuite in Burnaby comes to $12,114.72 before tax, about $13,568 delivered.
This is the real bottleneck, and it's the one most people underestimate. Cabinets are built to order. Nothing starts until you sign the drawings, and once you sign, changing a single cabinet restarts the clock.
Countertops are the last big thing to land, and they can't be rushed. Nobody can measure until the cabinets are physically installed and level. Then the slab is cut, which takes another week or two. Expect a real gap where you have cabinets but no counters and no kitchen sink.
Two different clocks here. Paint is genuinely last-minute and costs nothing to change your mind about. Tile is not — it's ordered, shipped, and installed early, and running out mid-job is a two-week delay.
The problem is specific: the vent has to terminate outside, through the exterior wall, and the strata has not allowed it where it needs to go. The outside wall is common property, so only the strata can approve it, and that can take one meeting or three months. It is entirely out of your hands.
Be careful with the tempting shortcut. Building the millwork wall now with a blanked-off box for the fireplace only works if you already know the venting can run the way it needs to. If the answer comes back no, or the vent has to move, the fireplace may have to shift or change — and millwork built around the wrong spot is millwork built twice.
What to do: push the strata for a clear answer on the vent termination location, in writing, as the top priority. Until that answer exists, talk to your contractor about signing off the kitchen and vanity drawings separately so the living room wall doesn't hold up the cabinet order. Do not let the fireplace delay the kitchen and bathrooms.
Week numbers are from the first day of demolition. Amber tags mark the moments where something is genuinely required from you — the rest, you can leave to your contractor.
You'll be in the unit for the whole job, which means at least one bathroom — toilet, sink and shower — must stay fully operational until another one is completely finished and running. That almost certainly means the bathrooms are done in phases rather than gutted together, and it changes the demolition, plumbing and tile sequence for the entire project.
This has not been settled yet. Ask your contractor this week: which bathroom stays live, when does it get swapped over, and how does that staging affect the schedule? Get his plan before demolition starts, because it's very hard to change after.
Nothing visible happens, and this is the most important week of the project. Permits, the strata alteration agreement, insurance certificates, elevator booking. Everything with a lead time gets ordered. Empty the rooms completely and set up wherever you'll be cooking for the next three months.
Cabinets, tile, fixtures and flooring come out. It's loud, it's filthy, and your home will look worse than you are prepared for. This is also when hidden problems surface — old pipes, water damage, framing that isn't where the drawings said. Some extra cost here is normal and not a sign of anything going wrong.
New pipes and wiring go into open walls, and any framing changes get built. This is when your fixture choices physically become permanent — shower valve heights, where the wall-mounted taps come out, niche locations, the outlets for the heated toilet seats.
Before a single sheet of drywall goes up, walk every room with your contractor and physically check heights and positions. Stand where you'll stand in the shower. Is the valve where your hand goes? Is the niche at the right height? Is there a light switch where you'd reach for it? Moving something today costs nothing. Moving it in three weeks means opening a tiled wall.
Walls close up and rooms reappear. Then comes taping — three or four thin coats of compound, each needing a day to dry, with sanding between. Very little appears to happen for about a week and a half. This is normal and cannot be sped up. The dust is fine and gets everywhere.
Bathroom floors and walls, waterproofing behind them, then grout. This is the first week the project starts to look like the thing you imagined. Tile is slow and skilled work — don't rush the tiler.
The kitchen and all three vanities are installed and levelled. Suddenly it's a kitchen. Walk it with your contractor and note anything damaged or wrong immediately — replacement doors take weeks to arrive, so flag them the day they land.
A templater comes and laser-measures the installed cabinets. Then the shop cuts your slab, which takes one to two weeks. During that window you have cabinets, no counters, no kitchen sink and no running water in the kitchen. Everyone finds this stretch demoralising. It is completely normal and there is no way around it.
Painting goes quickly and transforms everything. The backsplash goes in after the counters. The living room built-in is installed and scribed to the walls.
Taps, toilets, shower trim, light fixtures, switch plates, appliances, hardware. Water comes back on. Everything gets tested. This is the week it stops being a job site.
You and your contractor walk the whole place together and write one list of everything that isn't right — a scuff, a sticking drawer, a missed touch-up. One list, agreed in writing, then he works through it. Hold back your final payment until that list is genuinely finished. This last stretch always takes longer than anyone expects, because the trades have moved on to other jobs and come back in pieces.
He's managing trades, deliveries and a schedule across several jobs. A few habits will get you far better service, and they cost you nothing.
Keep a running note on your phone and send one message a day, or one list before your weekly check-in. Six separate texts across an afternoon is the single fastest way to become the difficult client, and it genuinely slows your job down.
Instead of asking what he thinks of a tile, ask by what date he needs the decision. That one question turns a vague conversation into a deadline you can work to, and it's the question contractors most wish clients would ask.
What's the last day I can change my mind on this without it costing us time?
After any decision made in person or by phone, send a short email: here's what we agreed. Not because you distrust him, but because he's holding twenty decisions in his head. A friendly written trail protects both of you and prevents nearly every dispute.
If you ask the tiler directly to shift something, he'll often say yes, and your contractor finds out a week later when it clashes with something else. Every request goes through one person. It feels slower. It isn't.
When something changes, ask for the cost and the schedule impact in writing before saying yes. "Go ahead and we'll sort it out later" is how a budget quietly grows by twenty percent. A good contractor will respect you for asking. Anyone who bristles at it is telling you something.
Happy to proceed — can you send me the price and how many days it adds before you start?
This is the hard one, and it matters more than any other habit on this page. Standing nearby while a trade works, chatting, watching over a shoulder — it feels friendly and involved, but to the person holding the tools it's deeply uncomfortable, and it genuinely slows the job and adds cost. A watched tradesperson works slower, takes fewer of the small initiatives that keep a job moving, and starts dreading the site. Make the decision, say good morning, then leave them to it. Trust what you agreed and check the result, not the process.
Turning up mid-morning stops work. Walk through after the trades have left, take photos of anything you want to ask about, and raise it the next morning. Once a week, at a set time, is plenty.
Renovating in a condo has a whole layer that a house doesn't. Getting this wrong can stop your job dead, so it's worth an afternoon of admin up front.
Most stratas require a signed agreement before any work begins, covering what you're changing and who's responsible afterwards. Get this signed before demo, not during. Ask the property manager for the form this week.
The strata will want your contractor's liability insurance certificate and his WorkSafeBC clearance letter on file. He'll have both. Ask him to send them straight to the property manager.
Most buildings restrict noisy work to weekday business hours and require the elevator to be booked and padded for deliveries and debris removal. Find out the rules now and pass them to your contractor, because a missed elevator booking can cost a whole day.
Some plumbing work needs the building riser shut down, which usually needs 48 hours' notice to every unit. Your contractor should flag these dates early so they can be posted.
Anything through the outside wall touches common property, and only the strata can approve it. That's the fireplace vent. It goes to council, sometimes to an engineer, occasionally to a full owners' vote. Assume months, not weeks.
A short friendly note to the floors above, below and either side before demolition week buys you an enormous amount of goodwill. Say what you're doing and roughly how long. Neighbours who were warned complain far less than neighbours who were surprised.
Three things about renovation budgets that nobody explains to first-timers.
On a project this size, set aside fifteen percent of the contract on top of the contract, and mentally spend it before you start. Old buildings hide surprises, and this is what turns a stressful discovery into a manageable one. If you don't need it, you've had a good outcome.
Expect a deposit, then payments tied to milestones — after rough-in, after cabinets, and so on. Never pay far ahead of the work that's actually done, and always keep a meaningful final payment until your deficiency list is closed.
Supplier quotes, including the plumbing one, are usually before tax and delivery. In BC that's 12% on fixtures. Your $12,114 fixture package is really about $13,568 landed.
A lot of what feels alarming during a renovation is just how renovations look from the inside.
Before drywall goes up, walk around and photograph every wall with the pipes and wiring exposed. Five minutes of work. In ten years, when someone needs to hang a shelf or find a pipe, those photos will be worth more than any drawing.
Everything waiting on the two of you, in the order it's needed. Tick items off as you go.
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