Nine to eighteen months
For a full renovation of a typical Markham house, plan on nine to eighteen months from the first meeting to move-in. Roughly half of that is over before demolition starts. Construction itself commonly lands between four and eight months.
Those are ranges, and they move with scope. Structural changes, a new kitchen, three bathrooms, replacing the mechanical systems and whether you stay living in the house all shift the number. A kitchen on its own is shorter. Voyance in Pickering, a kitchen facelift, took four months.
Cabinetry is the long pole. Custom cabinetry commonly runs ten to sixteen weeks from approved shop drawings to delivery, and that one line item sets the back half of nearly every schedule we build.
Design and permits take as long as the build
Construction can only move fast when every decision has already been made, and making decisions is slow. Design and documentation for a whole home commonly runs eight to sixteen weeks. Engineering follows where structure changes. Then comes the municipal review, which we do not control and will not promise a date for.
What we do control is the quality of the submission. Incomplete packages come back, and that round trip is the most common avoidable delay in this business. We would rather spend ten extra days completing the drawing set than six weeks answering questions.
Selections belong in this phase too. The species, grade, width, finish and supplier, rather than "white oak floor". Every selection left open here becomes a delay later.
The phases, in order
A whole-home renovation runs through roughly ten phases, and each one gates the next. Almost nothing can run out of order, which is why the total runs longer than any one phase suggests.
- Design and documentation. Eight to sixteen weeks. Layouts, elevations, selections, construction drawings.
- Engineering and application. Structural and mechanical where required, then submission and review.
- Procurement. Runs alongside the two phases above. This is where the schedule is decided.
- Demolition. One to three weeks. Older houses need a designated substance survey before anything comes down.
- Structure and framing. Two to six weeks, depending on how much of the load path changes.
- Rough-ins and inspections. Three to six weeks. Plumbing, electrical and HVAC, then the inspections that gate everything after.
- Insulation, drywall and taping. Three to five weeks. Taping needs drying time, whatever the calendar says.
- Millwork, tile, flooring and stone. Four to eight weeks.
- Paint, trim, doors and fixtures. Three to five weeks.
- Deficiencies and closeout. Two to four weeks, and longer than most people expect.
One sequence inside that list deserves attention. Stone cannot be templated until the cabinets are installed, and then it is fabricated, and then installed. That is two to three weeks of dead time in the middle of your kitchen. We schedule around it. We cannot remove it.
The long-lead items that set your date
Windows, cabinetry, appliances, stone and specialty tile decide your finish date more than crew size does.
- Windows. Eight to twenty weeks. Custom shapes and non-standard colours sit at the far end.
- Cabinetry. Ten to sixteen weeks from approved shop drawings for custom work, eight to twelve for semi-custom. The clock starts at your approval, not at the deposit.
- Appliances. A single panel-ready refrigerator can stall a kitchen, because the cabinet is built around its exact dimensions. Appliances are locked before cabinet drawings are released.
- Stone. Slabs sell, so select your bundle early and have the yard hold it.
- Specialty tile. Eight to twelve weeks from Europe. Order ten to fifteen per cent overage, because a replacement box months later will not match the original batch.
A change order costs weeks, not only money
A change made mid-build reaches backwards. Move a wall after rough-in and you are revising drawings, possibly filing a permit revision, undoing work that already passed inspection, rebooking that inspection, and reordering anything sized to the old dimension.
The invoice shows labour and materials. It does not show the four weeks of waiting.
Trade scheduling makes it worse. Every trade on your job is booked into a slot. If the electrician's window slides by ten days, the next available slot might be a month out, because that crew is now committed elsewhere. A ten-day slip becomes a month.
We build roughly fifteen per cent schedule contingency into every whole-home plan. Something always happens, whether a wall opens up and the framing behind it is not what the previous owner described, or a fixture goes on back order. The contingency absorbs that, and the projects that finish on time are the ones that have not spent it by month one.
How to protect your finish date
Make your material decisions early and completely, before demolition starts. That one habit does more for your finish date than anything else in your control.
- Finish every selection down to grout colour, hardware finish and hinge type.
- Review shop drawings the week they arrive, not the month.
- Nominate one decision maker, or two who agree privately before they call us.
- Stop shopping once construction begins. A better tile discovered in month three is not a bargain.
- Move out if you can. Living in the house through a whole-home renovation adds weeks, because trades work slower around occupied rooms and we lose the ability to run them in parallel.
Send us a floor plan or a sketch, a list of what must change and what stays, and your hard date if you have one. We will build a phase-by-phase schedule with every long-lead item named and dated, and tell you before you sign anything which of your dates is unrealistic. Start a conversation.