Nine to eighteen months
For a full renovation of a typical Markham house, plan on 9 to 18 months from first meeting to move-in. Roughly half of that runs before anyone swings a hammer. Construction itself commonly lands between 4 and 8 months.
Those are ranges, and they move with scope. Structural changes, a new kitchen, three bathrooms, mechanical replacement and whether you stay living in the house all shift the number.
Here is the one figure that surprises people most. Cabinetry commonly runs 10 to 16 weeks from approved shop drawings to delivery. That single line item sets the back half of nearly every schedule we build.
Design and permits take longer than the build
Because 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 8 to 16 weeks. Then engineering where structure changes. Then the municipal review, which is not ours to control and not ours to promise.
I will not quote a review time. Anyone who does is guessing, and you should treat that guess as a warning.
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 an extra ten days making the drawing set complete than spend six weeks answering questions.
Selections belong in this phase too. Not white oak floor, but the species, grade, width, finish and supplier. 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. Nothing here can be run out of order, and that sequence is what makes the total longer than the sum of the parts.
- Design and documentation. 8 to 16 weeks. Layouts, elevations, selections, construction drawings.
- Engineering and application. Structural and mechanical where required, then submission and review.
- Procurement. Runs in parallel with the two phases above. This is where the schedule is actually won or lost.
- Demolition. 1 to 3 weeks. Older houses need a designated substance survey before anything comes down.
- Structure and framing. 2 to 6 weeks, depending on how much load path changes.
- Rough-ins and inspections. 3 to 6 weeks. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, then inspections that gate everything after.
- Insulation, drywall and taping. 3 to 5 weeks. Taping needs drying time and it does not care about your date.
- Millwork, tile, flooring and stone. 4 to 8 weeks.
- Paint, trim, doors and fixtures. 3 to 5 weeks.
- Deficiencies and closeout. 2 to 4 weeks, and always longer than people expect.
One sequence inside that list deserves attention. Stone cannot be templated until the cabinets are installed. Then it is fabricated, then installed. That is 2 to 3 weeks of unavoidable dead air in the middle of your kitchen, and no amount of pressure compresses it. We schedule around it. We cannot remove it.
The long lead items that set your date
Windows, cabinetry, appliances, stone and specialty tile. These five decide your finish date more than your crew size does.
- Windows. 8 to 20 weeks. Custom shapes and non-standard colours sit at the far end.
- Cabinetry. 10 to 16 weeks from approved shop drawings. The clock starts at your approval, not at the deposit.
- Appliances. A single panel-ready refrigerator can stall a whole kitchen, because the cabinet gets built around its exact dimensions. Appliances must be locked before cabinet drawings are released.
- Stone. Slabs sell. Selecting and holding your bundle early is a scheduling act, not a shopping trip.
- Specialty tile. 8 to 12 weeks from Europe. Order 10 to 15 per cent overage, because a replacement box months later will not match the original batch.
A change order costs weeks, not just money
Because 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, his next available slot might be a month out, because he is now committed elsewhere. You did not lose ten days. You lost thirty.
A schedule with no contingency is not a schedule, it is a wish with dates on it.
We build roughly 15 per cent schedule contingency into every whole-home plan. Not as padding, as arithmetic. Something always happens. A wall opens up and the framing behind it is not what the previous owner claimed. A backordered fixture. A week of freezing rain. The contingency is there to absorb reality, and the projects that finish on time are the ones that do not spend it in month one.
How to keep the clock honest
Make your material decisions early and completely, before demolition starts. That single habit does more for your finish date than anything else available to you.
- Finish every selection down to grout colour, hardware finish and hinge type.
- Approve shop drawings the day they arrive, not the week they arrive.
- 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 space and you lose the ability to run them in parallel.
Book a scope call. Bring 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 you a phase-by-phase schedule with every long lead item named and dated, and we will tell you which of your dates is unrealistic before you sign anything. One construct holds that schedule, and every trade on it works under our contract.