A kitchen remodel budget splits into five spending categories — layout and rough-in trades, cabinetry, countertops, appliances, and finishes — plus a contingency line that gets set before any of the five gets a number. When the sink, range, refrigerator, and vent stay where they are, cabinetry carries the largest share at roughly 35 to 40 percent of the total, layout and rough-in sits at 8 to 12 percent, counters at 10 to 13, appliances at 10 to 12, finishes at 12 to 15, and demolition contingency at 10 to 12. Move the sink or take out a wall and the layout share roughly doubles, to 20 to 28 percent, contingency climbs to 15 to 20, and every other category gives ground to pay for it. That shift — not the individual percentages — is what decides whether the project finishes or stalls for a year.
I keep the whole split on one page. Five columns across the top, a sixth for contingency, and a total in the corner that never changes. That fixed total is the only thing in the room that doesn't move, and every decision for the next three months becomes a question of which column pays for it.
Four points decide which set of percentages you're using
Stand in the doorway of the kitchen you're about to gut and look at four things before you look at a single cabinet door: the sink drain, the range's fuel line and vent, the refrigerator opening, and the wall you're thinking about removing.
Those four points are the whole budget. If all of them stay put, you're in the refresh column and the cheap set of percentages applies. If any one of them moves, you've bought into the layout column, and there the numbers stop behaving like percentages and start behaving like multiples. People plan a moved sink as if it were a slightly bigger version of the same job. It isn't. It's a different job with the same cabinets in it.
The tell is the drain. A new drain run over a basement or crawlspace is a few hours of a plumber's day and some new pipe. The same run in a slab means cutting concrete, excavating, tying in, and patching, and that single change can cost more than the countertop it sits under — sometimes more than the counters and the backsplash together. Nobody budgets for the floor. The floor is where the surprise lives.
The electrical side is quieter and just as expensive. An induction range that needs a new 240-volt circuit, a hood that has to reach an exterior wall through a cabinet run, a panel with no open slots left — each of those is a layout problem wearing an appliance costume. You'll approve it thinking you're buying an appliance, and it will come out of the layout column anyway.
Define the buckets before you divide the money
Most budget blowups I've watched weren't caused by a category costing too much. They were caused by money landing in the wrong column, so the wrong column got cut later. Fix the definitions first.
- Layout and rough-in: permits, drawings, demolition, dumpster, framing, drywall patching and finishing, plumbing rough and finish, electrical rough and finish, gas, venting, subfloor repair, structural work. The wiring for a new under-cabinet light lives here. The fixture itself does not.
- Cabinetry: boxes, doors, drawer hardware, fillers, panels, crown, toe kick, the installation labor, and the removal and haul-away of the old cabinets. Put haul-away here, not in layout, or the layout column reads worse than it is and you'll start cutting the wrong bucket.
- Countertops: template, fabrication, edge profile, cutouts, and the sink if it's mounted to the counter. Pick one home for the sink and don't count it twice.
- Appliances: the appliances, delivery, trim kits. The connections belong to layout, which is exactly why people double-pay for them.
- Finishes: flooring and its installation, backsplash tile and setting, paint, cabinet hardware, baseboard and trim, light fixtures.
The plumbing for the sink goes in layout. The tile behind the sink goes in finishes. Get that boundary wrong by a few thousand and the percentages stop meaning anything.
The two columns, side by side
These are working ratios, not survey averages — the point isn't the exact digit, it's the shape of the shift.
| Category | Footprint stays | Footprint changes |
|---|---|---|
| Layout and rough-in | 8–12% | 20–28% |
| Cabinetry and install | 35–40% | 24–30% |
| Countertops | 10–13% | 8–12% |
| Appliances | 10–12% | 8–12% |
| Finishes | 12–15% | 10–13% |
| Contingency | 10–12% | 15–20% |
Pick a point inside each band so the column sums to 100. A footprint-stays job might run 38 / 10 / 12 / 11 / 14 / 15. Same job with the wall out and the sink moved might run 25 / 27 / 10 / 10 / 11 / 17.
Look at what happened in the second column. A quarter of the project went to trades that leave nothing behind you can photograph. The cabinets got smaller. The finishes got smaller. Nobody's kitchen looks better because the drain moved. That's the trade, and it should be a decision you make on purpose rather than one that gets made for you in week five.
Contingency belongs to demolition, not to upgrades
One contingency percentage used as a general slush fund disappears by week three, and then the real surprises in week six get paid for by cutting tile and living with a hole where a light was supposed to go.
Set the demolition reserve as a function of what's behind the walls, not as a round number you like. Each yes pushes you toward the high end of the band:
- The drain runs under a slab rather than over a basement or crawlspace.
- A load-bearing wall is involved.
- The panel is old, full, or both.
- The existing supply lines are galvanized or the drains are cast iron — old pipe rarely survives being moved, and once it's opened, it usually gets replaced.
- The vent path has no exterior wall within reach.
- The house predates 1978, which brings lead paint and asbestos handling into demolition and adds work before any of the fun starts.
- The floor under the old flooring is unknown, and the kitchen is more than a few decades old.
Two or three checks and 10 to 12 percent is honest. Five or more and you're at 15 to 20, and you should already have moved money out of the finish column to fund it. And keep the demolition reserve inside the layout column rather than in a separate pot. It will be spent there, and pretending otherwise hides the drift until it's too late to react.
Two tiers, not five equal pots
The five categories aren't five competitors. They're two tiers, and they fail differently.
Layout and cabinetry are committed money. They're dimensional, they're ordered early, and they set the geometry of everything downstream. Once the cabinets are set, the countertop can't be templated and the backsplash can't be laid out. Counters, appliances, and finishes are deferrable money. You can postpone them, downgrade them, or stage them across two years without disturbing the geometry at all.
So when the layout comes in over, the money comes out of the deferrable tier. Not because finishes matter less, but because pulling it out of the committed tier mid-project creates rework — a cabinet run that shifts an inch wastes a template, a countertop order, and a tile layout. Deferring is a haircut. Reordering is a wound.
Track what you've committed, not what you've paid
Money isn't spent when the check clears. It's spent the moment you sign the quote or place the order. A payment ledger tells you what already happened; you need it to tell you what's already gone.
Five columns, a sixth for contingency, and four numbers per column: planned percent, committed dollars, committed as a percent of the original total, and the gap between the two. Recalculate against the original total every time, never against the current one. If you recalculate against the current total, the percentages always look perfect, because the target moves with the overspend.
The trigger I use: when any bucket runs five percentage points over plan, every deferrable decision freezes until demolition is finished. Not until the quote comes in — until the walls are open and the unknowns have stopped being unknown. That's usually a three-week pause in countertop and tile decisions, and it's the single thing that has saved the most money on kitchens I've been close to.
One more move that pays for itself: price the plumber and the electrician together, on one walkthrough. A moved sink needs a drain and a circuit for the disposal, and each trade will assume the other one is handling it. That gap is a change order waiting to happen, and change orders are what break the percentages.
Where the percentages break
They break in small kitchens. A narrow galley with very little counter footage still pays a template and fabrication minimum, so the countertop share jumps into the teens no matter what you do, and it has to come from somewhere. It comes from appliances or finishes, and you should decide that up front rather than discover it.
They break when the budget is small enough that permits, delivery, and minimum charges take a bigger bite than any category rule accounts for.
They break when you supply your own cabinets or keep your appliances, because the split turns labor-heavy and the cabinetry column collapses toward zero. Rebuild the column from what's actually being bought, then check the shift against the table above — that's the signal, not the table itself.
The percentages aren't there to tell you what to buy. They're there to tell you what your next decision costs before you make it. One page, one fixed total, five columns, and the discipline to take money from the part that can wait and give it to the part that can't.
