Kitchen renovation in Oakville

Kitchens in Oakville homes

Oakville is where many of our clients live, and the kitchen is where most of them start. What the project looks like depends a great deal on when the house was built.

South of the QEW

In Old Oakville, Bronte, Eastlake, and the streets of southwest Oakville, houses range from nineteenth-century homes to mid-century bungalows and side-splits. Kitchens were built small and separate. The usual goal is to connect the kitchen to the dining and living areas and to the backyard.

In these houses, plan for what opening the walls may reveal: older wiring that has to be brought up to standard, supply lines and drains at the end of their life, and floors that are no longer level. We look for the signs at the site visit so they are in the budget, not a surprise.

Glen Abbey, River Oaks, College Park, and Falgarwood

These neighbourhoods were built mostly between the 1960s and the 1990s. The classic layout is a kitchen with a small eating area, half-separated from a family room, with a formal dining room on the other side. The cabinets are often original oak, and the lighting is a single fixture and a fluorescent box.

Here the most requested change is one larger room: the wall to the family room comes down, an island takes the place of the old peninsula, and the eating area becomes part of the kitchen.

West Oak Trails, Joshua Creek, Iroquois Ridge, and north Oakville

Newer homes with open plans already. Projects here are usually about replacing builder-grade cabinets and counters with something better made and better organised, often within the same layout, which keeps the project in the essential or mid-range tier.

Town of Oakville permits for kitchens

The Town of Oakville’s guidance on interior alterations draws the line clearly.

Typically no permit: replacing existing cabinetry, sinks, and faucets, and cosmetic changes to surfaces.

Permit required:

• removing walls, especially load-bearing walls, which may need engineered beams and changes to heating ducts,
• adding windows or enlarging existing ones, and
• adding or relocating plumbing fixtures, such as moving the sink to a new island.

For a permit application the Town asks for floor plans, engineered beam details and framing plans where a load-bearing wall is removed, and a water service sizing form when plumbing fixtures are added. Floor plans must show the kitchen exhaust fan. We prepare the drawings and manage the application.

Electrical work, such as new circuits for an island or induction range, is inspected separately through the Electrical Safety Authority.

Heritage districts and conservation land

If your home is in the Old Oakville, First and Second Street, Trafalgar Road, or Downtown Oakville heritage conservation district, a kitchen project that changes the exterior, for example a new window over the sink or a bump-out at the back, needs heritage approval first. A kitchen that stays within the existing walls is usually not affected.

Homes backing onto Sixteen Mile Creek, Bronte Creek, or the lakeshore sit near land regulated by Conservation Halton. That matters only if the kitchen project extends the footprint of the house.

How the project runs

1. Phone conversation, then a free site visit at your Oakville home.
2. Budget and design. We agree on a realistic budget and design to it from your mood board and inspiration photos.
3. 3D rendering, on request, so you can see the kitchen before committing.
4. Approval. Your old kitchen is still in place and usable.
5. Demolition and preparation start 7 to 9 days after design approval.
6. Cabinets in one day; countertops and everything else the next day.

In total, you are without a working kitchen for 2 days.

The full picture of what a kitchen renovation includes is on our main kitchen renovation page, and our kitchen renovation cost guide explains the price tiers below.