Six Things to Have Ready Before the First Kitchen Visit

A first visit can go one of two ways. It can produce a scope and a realistic number, or it can produce a friendly forty-minute conversation and an email that says “somewhere between thirty and eighty thousand”. The difference is almost entirely what the homeowner has ready.

Here is the list. It takes about twenty minutes.

1. Measure the runs

Measure the length of wall carrying cabinets, run by run, in feet. A galley is two numbers. An L is two. A U is three. Add the ceiling height, and note the position and width of any window or door in the kitchen walls.

This matters because cabinetry is priced by the linear foot and it is roughly 40 percent of a kitchen budget, per Fixr’s January 2026 breakdown. Without a run length nobody can give you a cabinet number, and without a cabinet number nobody can give you a project number.

2. Photograph it properly

One photograph from each corner of the room, one straight at the sink run, and one of the electrical panel wherever it lives in the house.

That last one is the useful one and it is the one nobody takes. A photograph of the panel shows the amperage, how many spaces are free, and what condition it is in, and that answers a question that otherwise becomes a second visit or a surprise at rough-in.

3. Decide whether the layout is staying

This is the largest fork in the whole project. Keeping the sink, the range and the walls where they are keeps everything predictable. Moving the sink brings drain and vent with it. Taking out a wall brings structure, an engineer and a permit.

You do not have to have decided. You do have to know which of those you are asking about, because they are different conversations with different numbers.

4. Find out what is under the floor

Slab or crawl space. It is the cheapest thing to find out and it changes the plumbing cost more than any other single fact.

Check the number of steps from exterior grade to the front door, look for foundation vents around the perimeter, and see whether there is a crawl space hatch. In Chula Vista, the older housing west of Interstate 805 is commonly raised floor and the eastern master-planned communities are commonly slab, but check rather than assume. There is a longer piece on how to tell.

5. List what stays and what goes

Write it down, because it is easy to forget on the day:

• Which appliances are staying, with their actual measured dimensions
• Whether the flooring continues into an adjoining room, and whether that room is in scope
• Whether the existing cabinet boxes might be worth keeping and refacing
• Anything you specifically want kept, whether that is a window seat, a piece of built-in furniture or the position of a particular door
• Anything that has already been quoted or looked at by somebody else

6. Say a number

This is the one people resist, and it is the one that helps most.

A budget range is not a negotiating position that gets spent up to. It is the thing that determines which scope goes in front of you. Somebody working to $30,000 and somebody working to $80,000 in the same room should be shown two different projects, and without a range the estimator has to guess which one you are.

If you do not know what a range should be, work one out first. The cost calculator builds a bracket from published figures and your own run length, and the cost guide carries every number with its source and date.

What you should get back

A quote that names the cabinet line, construction and finish rather than just a door style. Countertop material and grade. Which items are allowances and what happens if you choose above one. Whether appliances are supplied or supplied by you. The electrical scope, including whether the panel has been assessed. The range hood and its duct route. Who pulls the permits. And a payment schedule tied to progress, with a written change-order process.

California requires a written contract on any home improvement job over $500, and it holds the deposit down to a tenth of the price or $1,000, so the paperwork side of this is settled before you even ask.