Pulled the kickboards off a kitchen at Corrimal last year and found the whole run of base cabinets sitting on packers that had gone to mush. Someone had levelled the lot with chipboard offcuts about twenty years earlier, the dishwasher had been weeping quietly ever since, and the packers had turned into weetbix. The owners had lived with doors that never quite lined up and assumed that's just what old kitchens do.
They'd budgeted for a kitchen. They hadn't budgeted for a floor.
That's most of what I want to say about kitchen costs, honestly. The cabinets are the bit you pick out of a catalogue and the bit everyone prices. The number moves on everything else.
Right, the number
Around the Illawarra in 2026, here's roughly where the lines fall for the whole job, every trade in.
A flat-pack refresh that keeps the layout exactly where it is — new boxes, new doors, laminate benchtop, sink and taps back in the same holes — is about $12,000 to $20,000. Nothing gets relocated, so nobody's labour blows out.
Mid-range is where most people actually land once they're in it. Same footprint or close to it, better flat-pack or semi-custom cabinetry, stone benchtop, new splashback, a bit of electrical because you want more power points than the house was built with. Call it $25,000 to $40,000.
Full custom — wall coming out, island going in, joinery built for the room, the good appliances — starts around $50,000 and I've seen it past $80,000 in a nice place at Austinmer without anybody going mad.
Wide spread. It's the same reason a bathroom reno swings from $15k to $35k: a kitchen is a small room with five or six trades taking turns in it, and each of those trades has a fixed cost of turning up regardless of how big the room is.
What the carpentry part actually costs
This is the bit I can give you a straight answer on, because it's the bit I do.
On a standard flat-pack fit where the layout stays put, the carpentry and install is usually $3,000 to $6,000. That's assembling the boxes, levelling and fixing them, cutting and fitting a laminate or timber benchtop, cutting out for the sink and cooktop, kickboards, end panels, scribing everything into walls that aren't straight, and coming back at the end to hang the doors and adjust the drawers properly.
Add a wall coming out, custom cabinetry, or a subfloor that needs repairing and our part climbs to $8,000 to $15,000 or beyond depending what we find. The kitchen carpentry page goes into what's in and out of scope.
So if you're staring at a $28,000 quote, the chippy is maybe a fifth of it. The stone crew, the sparky, the plumber, the tiler and the cabinetry itself are the rest. Worth knowing when someone tells you they can do the whole thing cheaper — usually something's been left off the sheet, and it's rarely the sink.
Flat-pack isn't the cheap option, it's the sensible one
Bit of a bugbear this one. People say flat-pack like it's an apology.
We've been a Bunnings install partner for eight-odd years so I've assembled more flat-pack kitchens than I can count, and the hardware on the decent ranges now is the same soft-close gear you'll find in custom joinery. What you're buying with custom isn't better drawers. It's the ability to make a cabinet 683mm wide because that's what the room is.
Which matters more than you'd think in the older housing out here. Post-war fibro and brick veneer places through Corrimal, Fairy Meadow, Warrawong — the walls bow, the floors fall away toward the back of the house, and the room is never the tidy multiple of 300mm the flat-pack catalogue assumes. Half a day of a kitchen install disappears into packing and scribing so the finished run looks like it was made for the room.
Where I'll tell you to go custom is a galley that's an awkward width, a corner that has to work hard, or an island sitting somewhere the joists don't want an island. Everywhere else, flat-pack with a careful install beats custom with a rushed one, and it's thousands cheaper.
The wall everybody wants gone
Nearly every kitchen enquiry I get includes some version of "can we open it up to the living room". Usually yes. It's the single biggest thing you can do to an old Illawarra house.
First question is whether it's holding the roof up. If it is, we frame a beam and posts sized for the span before anything comes down, and that's a real cost — not catastrophic, but budget a few thousand for the beam, the posts, the making good and the sign-off. Structural changes like that need a certifier or the council through Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama or Shoalhaven, and the current rules on what needs what sit with NSW Planning. I'll tell you honestly which bucket your job's in rather than glossing over it to land the work. That's the wall and frame side of what we do anyway.
Second question is what's in the wall. Wiring, usually. Sometimes a waste pipe, which is the expensive answer.
The stuff you find with the cabinets out
Back to that Corrimal floor. This is the line people leave out of the budget and it's the one that bites.
Lift the old vinyl and you'll often find boards that have had a slow leak under the sink for years, a patched section where a previous kitchen stood, occasionally a bit of termite work nobody knew about. It has to be sorted before the new flooring goes down, and it can only be found once the room's stripped. On maybe a third of the older kitchens we do there's something down there.
I'd rather you knew that before we start than found out on day two, so I put a provisional figure in the quote for it and we take it back off if the floor's fine. Some of them are.
Getting quotes you can actually compare
Once the job's over $5,000 all up it has to be done by a licensed builder under a written contract. That's the NSW building and trade licensing rule, and just about every kitchen clears it. Ask to see a licence number. Anyone straight will hand it over without a flinch.
Then make sure you're comparing the same scope. When I quote a kitchen I split my carpentry out from what the sparky, plumber, stone mob and tiler will charge, so you can see the whole number and also see which bit is mine. Three quotes that each include a different set of trades aren't three quotes. They're three different jobs.
Last thing: timing. Your kitchen is out of action a couple of weeks on most jobs even though my time on the tools is more like three to five days, because the trades go in an order and each one waits on the last. Stock a kettle and a microwave somewhere else in the house and stop counting the days. Everyone does it. Everyone regrets it.
If you've got a kitchen anywhere from Helensburgh to Nowra you want opened up or brought back to life, ring Dave on 0414 007 351 or send the form through. I'll come and have a proper look, poke around under the sink, and give you a real figure with the carpentry priced separately so you know exactly what you're paying me for.
Want a hand with this at your place? Get a free quote or call 0414 007 351.
