Schedule and lead time
How long the kitchen is out, and the one date that decides it
Almost every kitchen that runs long runs long for one of two reasons: the cabinets were ordered too late, or nobody counted the wait between the countertop template and the countertop arriving. Both are waiting rather than working, and waiting does not appear on a contractor's day count.
The dependency chain, and the date it works back to
Latest date the cabinets can be ordered
0.4 weeks ago
The order is already behind the schedule below. Every further week is a week the crew stands still after the floor goes down.
Of 45 calendar days, 26 have someone working in your kitchen and 19 do not. The waiting is not slack in the schedule — it is the schedule. Compressing the 26 working days by hiring a bigger crew changes the finish date by very little; moving the cabinet order earlier changes it a lot.
- The cabinet order needed to be placed 0.4 weeks ago to keep the site moving. Every week from here is a week the crew stands still after the floor goes down, and that is dead time you are usually paying for.
The chain, phase by phase
| Phase | Days | Kind | What is actually happening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demolition and haul-out | 3 | work | The kitchen becomes unusable on day one of this phase, not on the day the cabinets come out. |
| Rough plumbing, electrical and framing | 5 | work | Everything that has to happen before a wall can be closed. The scope of this phase is decided by how many services move. |
| Inspection holds | 8 | inspection | 2 inspections at 4 days of waiting each. Nothing can be covered until each one passes, and a failed inspection restarts its own wait. |
| Drywall, prime and paint | 6 | work | Mud has to dry between coats, which is why this phase resists being compressed by adding people. |
| Flooring | 3 | work | Laid before the cabinets in most builds, so the cabinets sit on the finished floor and a future appliance can slide in and out. |
| Cabinet set | 4 | work | Cannot start before the cabinets arrive. This is the point where a late order stops the entire site. |
| Countertop template to install | 11 | wait | The counter cannot be templated until the cabinets are set and level, and cannot be fabricated until it is templated. This wait is sequential with everything before it and is the most commonly omitted item on a schedule. |
| Plumbing and electrical trim-out | 3 | work | The sink cannot be connected until the counter is in, so the plumber returns after the fabricator leaves. |
| Punch list | 2 | work | Doors adjusted, filler scribed, touch-up paint, the drawer that binds. Short, and almost never scheduled. |
The middle column is the one that matters. Work can sometimes be compressed by adding people. Waiting cannot be compressed at all, and the two waits in this chain — inspections and countertop fabrication — are both sequential with everything around them.
Lead time by grade, and why it decides everything else
| Grade | What it means | Typical lead | What the lead time is doing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock, carried in the warehouse | Boxes already sitting in a warehouse | Days to two weeks | Nothing. This grade takes the cabinet order off the critical path entirely. |
| Stock line, special order | Standard sizes, built to a batch schedule | Three to six weeks | Waiting for the factory to reach your batch. |
| Semi-custom | Standard boxes, modified sizes and finishes | Six to twelve weeks | A finish queue and a modification queue, usually in series. |
| Full custom, built for this room | Built for this room by a shop | Ten to twenty-four weeks | A shop's entire order book ahead of yours, plus the finish. |
These are the bands the tool checks your quoted lead time against. If a supplier quotes a lead well under the band for their grade, that is worth a written confirmation, because the entire schedule above is standing on it. If they quote well over, ask whether it is the shop queue or the finish, since a finish change can sometimes recover weeks and a queue position cannot.
The cost that is not on any bid
This kitchen is out of service for 43 days. That is not a construction cost and no contractor will put it on a quote, but it is money leaving the household every single one of those days, and on these numbers it comes to $813.
- A temporary kitchen — a fridge, a microwave, a kettle and a table in another room — roughly halves it, and costs almost nothing to set up.
- A working sink somewhere on the same floor is worth more than any other single item, and a utility sink or a bathroom sink counts.
- Ask the fabricator whether a temporary plywood top with the sink hooked up is permitted during the fabrication wait. Many will allow it and few offer it.
- Plan the out-of-service window around anything already in the household calendar, because the fixed dates in your life will not move for the schedule.
The disruption figure uses a daily amount that is ours and is almost certainly wrong for your household. It is exposed as a control above for exactly that reason: Assumed extra food spending per household per day while the kitchen is out of service, above what the household would have spent cooking at home. It is a placeholder for your own number, and yours is the one that matters.