The honest timeline — design to first dinner

Good design time is not a delay — it is the cheapest insurance in the project. The brief, the spatial design, the appliance specification and the cabinetry drawings each want iteration, and compressing them is how apertures end up wrong and duct routes end up in concrete. A focused renovation can clear design in a month; an architectural kitchen inside a larger build runs longer because it moves with the house.

The critical output of this stage is the order package: final appliance schedule, cabinetry order drawings, surface selections and services layout. Nothing downstream starts until this is signed — which is why decisive clients finish faster than wealthy ones.

Imported cabinetry is manufactured against your order — German and Italian systems typically land ten to sixteen weeks after sign-off, sea freight included. Flagship appliances run eight to sixteen depending on house and model; limited-run pieces can exceed that. Exchange-rate movements and port congestion are real variables; your specialist should be quoting current lead times, not brochure ones.

The professional move is to start both clocks on the same day and to order long-lead appliances even earlier when the design allows — the instruments can wait in a warehouse; a site cannot wait for instruments. This is also the window in which gas compliance, electrical upgrades and backup-power work should be booked, because certified trades have their own diaries.

Demolition, first-fix plumbing and electrical, screeds, walls and ceilings, floor laying, painting — the familiar construction rhythm, timed so the room is ready just before the cabinetry lands. In a renovation this is the loud, dusty stretch; in a new build it dissolves into the main programme.

The scheduling sin to avoid is finishing site works months before the imports arrive — an empty, perfect room aging while cabinetry crosses an ocean. A competent coordinator back-times the site from the confirmed shipping dates, not from enthusiasm.

Cabinetry installation is millimetre work — a full kitchen takes one to two weeks in skilled hands. Stone templating happens only once carcasses are set, and fabrication adds a week or two; this is why worktops arrive after the cabinetry, not with it. Appliances are integrated, gas and electrical certificates issued, and the machines commissioned — ovens calibrated, refrigeration pulled to temperature, coffee systems flushed and programmed.

Budget a final week for the snag list and resist moving in on top of it. The difference between a kitchen handed over and a kitchen finished is about ten days of patience.

Three habits separate on-time projects from the other kind. First: decide early, change never — the change order after sign-off is the single biggest schedule killer, because a revised cabinetry order restarts a sixteen-week clock. Second: order the long-lead items the day the design closes, and let the site fit the imports rather than the reverse. Third: appoint one coordinator — designer, specialist or project manager — who owns the whole calendar, because a timeline with three owners has none.

And if the family lives in the house through the work: plan the temporary kitchen like it matters, because for four months it does. A plumbed tap, the old refrigerator and a decent portable induction plate preserve more goodwill than any finish upgrade.