Kitchen remodelingin Indianapolis, IN
Two ways to a kitchen you want to stand in. Keep the layout and change every surface, or change the plan itself. We will tell you which one your kitchen actually needs, and what each costs, before you commit to either.
What kitchen remodeling in Indianapolis actually involves
A pre-war Indianapolis kitchen sits at the back of the house and it is small, because it was never meant to be lived in. In a bungalow, a foursquare or one of the Indianapolis doubles, the back door, the basement stair and often a rear service stair all land in the same eight feet of floor, so circulation is the problem before cabinets are. Two things we look for on the first visit. One is the chimney chase left from a coal-fired gravity furnace, usually running up the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Taking it out is roof work, not kitchen work, and if a water heater still vents into it the job grows a venting line as well. The other is a rear kitchen framed over a crawl space or brick piers while the rest of the house sits on a basement. That change in structure under the floor decides what moving a sink costs. Township houses are as often slab or crawl as basement, which is not true of anything built in Hamilton County after 1990, and it decides whether power and drain reach an island from below or through a chase. Then there is the panel. Sixty-amp services and fuse boxes are still live in the older neighborhoods, and a service upgrade in Marion County schedules around AES Indiana rather than around us. We check it before pricing a plan, not during.
We have been opening walls in Marion County since 2012
Indianapolis is a consolidated city-county, and its housing runs from 1860s downtown terraces to subdivisions finished last year. Three eras account for nearly everything we are asked to work on, and they are three different trades: the pre-war neighbourhoods inside the old city, the mid-century ranches of the northern townships, and recent building on the edges.
- Pre-war housing inside the old city — plaster over lath, balloon framing, service panels never sized for a modern kitchen
- Mid-century ranches through Washington, Lawrence and Pike townships, usually with one bearing wall between the kitchen and the living room and original galvanised supply lines
- Thirteen locally designated historic districts where the Historic Preservation Commission reviews exterior work before anyone touches it
Clay, combined sewers, and five permit offices
Marion County sits on the same heavy clay till as the rest of Central Indiana, is in the same EPA Radon Zone 1, and has the same 30-to-36-inch frost depth, so any new footing bears below that. What differs is age and jurisdiction. Much of the housing inside the old city limits predates the war, four excluded municipalities run their own building departments, thirteen locally designated historic districts sit on top of that, and the older core drains to a combined sewer.
Five permit offices
Unigov merged Indianapolis with Marion County but left three excluded cities — Beech Grove, Lawrence and Southport — and the town of Speedway with their own governments and their own building departments. The mailing address still reads Indianapolis. We confirm which office covers yours before we put a schedule in writing.
Clay, canopy and grade
Heavy clay holds water against a foundation and freeze-thaw moves it every season. In the older neighborhoods a mature canopy fills the gutters, and roots lift the walk until the ground slopes back toward the house. Downspout discharge and grade explain most wet basements here.
Pre-1978 paint
Much of the housing inside the old city was built before 1978. Disturbing more than six square feet of painted surface there puts the job under the federal RRP lead rule — plastic containment, HEPA cleanup, a cleaning verification. It is schedule and labor a 2004 house never asks for.
River and creek corridors
White River runs the length of the county; Fall Creek, Pleasant Run and Eagle Creek on the west side feed it. Near any of them the flood map, not the block, decides what can go below grade and how a lower level gets treated. We check the address first.
Every project is planned and executed for long-term performance
Keep the layout
- Professional cabinet repainting with a factory-finish appearance
- Backsplash installation
- Countertop replacement — granite, quartz and other materials
Change the layout
- Custom cabinet manufacturing
- Electrical and plumbing adjustments for a new layout
- Flooring, tile and trim carried through to the next room
Either way
- Appliance fitting, including panel-ready and built-in units
- Trim, lighting and the joins to every adjoining room
Everything kitchen remodeling covers
- Cabinet refinishing
- Doors and drawer fronts come off and are sprayed off site. Everything is degreased first — cooking grease left in the old finish is what a new coat fails to stick to — then deglossed, sealed and sprayed in a catalyzed finish. Boxes are sprayed in place with the room masked off.
- Cabinet refacing
- The boxes stay. Face frames get a veneer or laminate skin, and doors, drawer fronts, hinges and hardware are all new. It makes sense where the carcasses are sound and the layout already works, because neither of those changes.
- Custom cabinets
- Built to the room rather than to a catalogue increment, which matters in older houses where nothing is square and stock runs leave filler strips everywhere. It is also how you get a 34-inch cabinet, a panel-ready dishwasher and a specific drawer stack in the same run.
- Countertop replacement
- Templated on the set cabinets, so the counter follows the wall rather than the drawing. We handle sink and cooktop cutouts, the edge profile, where the seams land, and reconnecting the plumbing and disposal once the slab is in.
- Backsplash installation
- The wall gets flattened first — tile follows the plane it is set on, and a bowed drywall joint shows in every grout line. Outlets are extended forward, cuts land under the cabinet line where possible, and the top edge dies into cabinet or casing.
- Kitchen island
- Aisle clearance, seating overhang, and what it carries. Any island worth building needs a receptacle, so a circuit gets routed under the floor even for a plain work surface — a different job on a slab than over a crawl space. A sink or cooktop adds drain, vent and the gas or 240-volt run.
- Opening a wall
- Taking out the wall between kitchen and living room, to a beam either flush with the ceiling or dropped below it. We size it, carry the load down to bearing, handle the permit and inspection, and patch ceiling and floor across the old line.
The five things that turn a kitchen remodel into a repair
Brushing latex onto cabinet doors
Factory finishes are cured and slick. Paint over one and it stays soft, prints from a fingernail later, and peels at the door knuckle. The finish gets degreased, deglossed, then sealed and sprayed in one compatible catalyzed system — conversion varnish or pre-catalyzed lacquer over its own sealer — not wall paint over a hardware-store primer.
Sizing the island off a drawing
A drawing shows the island. It does not show the dishwasher door open across the aisle. NKBA guidance is 42 inches of clear aisle for one cook and 48 where two people pass; we measure the swing of every door and drawer into that aisle before the island gets its final width.
Ending the backsplash mid-wall
Tile should die into something — an outside corner, the last cabinet in the run, the edge of a window casing. Stopping it in open wall leaves a caulk line that reads as unfinished forever. Behind a range it goes full height to the hood, not to the cabinet line.
Opening a wall without the load path
A beam is the easy half. The load has to keep going: posts at both ends, blocking down through the floor system, and something under it in the basement that reaches a footing. We work that out — with an engineer where the span calls for one — before quoting the opening.
Assuming the panel can take it
An induction range, a double oven and a microwave drawer all want dedicated circuits, on top of the two 20-amp small-appliance circuits the countertop receptacles need. In a house with a full 100-amp panel that is a service question, and it belongs on the estimate, not halfway through the job.
Repaint, reface or replace
Three ways to change how the cabinets look, and they are not a good-better-best ladder. Which one applies is decided by the boxes and the layout, not by budget — we tell you which case yours is at the walkthrough.
| Approach | What we actually do | What it will not fix |
|---|---|---|
| Repaint | Doors off, everything degreased and deglossed, sprayed in a catalyzed finish. Existing doors, boxes and layout all stay. | Dated door profiles, a swollen sink base, doors that no longer sit square, or a layout that does not work. |
| Reface | Boxes stay and get new veneer on the face frames; doors, fronts, hinges and hardware are all new. | The layout, the cabinet sizes, or boxes whose sides will not hold a hinge screw any more. |
| Replace, stock or semi-custom | Stock arrives in fixed 3-inch increments; semi-custom is the same catalogue with width, depth and height modifications, usually in 1-inch steps. | Stock leaves odd wall lengths to filler strips and makes panel-ready appliances awkward; neither version moves a window or a plumbing wall. |
| Replace, custom built | Cabinets built to the measured room, including panel-ready appliance fronts and drawer stacks sized to what you own. | The room itself — windows, plumbing walls and ceiling height stay where they are. It does not shorten the schedule; build time is the long lead. |
Four things move a kitchen quote
Cabinets
Repaint, reface or build new — three very different numbers for the same room.
Countertop
Slab choice, edge profile and the number of seams and cutouts.
Moving services
Relocating the sink, range or a wall brings plumbing, electrical and permits with it.
Appliances
Panel-ready and built-in units change the cabinetry around them, not just the budget.
We walk the room, measure, and send a written estimate with materials and labor itemized — so you can see exactly which of these four is costing you money.
We pull the permit. You do not chase the Marion County Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.
Permits inside Marion County go through the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services at 200 E Washington Street, and residential review typically runs ten to fifteen business days — longer than any of the Hamilton County offices. DBNS also requires the applicant to be either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner.
All of it is built to the 2020 Indiana Residential Code — the 2018 International Residential Code plus the 2020 Indiana amendments, and we meet the inspector on site rather than leaving you to.
Indianapolis and the surrounding area
- Broad Ripple
- Meridian-Kessler
- Nora
- Castleton
- Irvington
- Butler-Tarkington
We are based in Fishers, about 25 minutes from Indianapolis. That is a drive we make constantly and there is no travel charge — what distance changes is scheduling, not price. We block work in one area into continuous runs rather than splitting a crew across the metro in a day.
What other people spend, so you have somewhere to start
The typical range
Independent cost research puts a typical Indianapolis kitchen remodel in the region of $18,000 to $24,000, across a full spread of roughly $8,000 to $40,000 depending on how much of the room changes.
Another way to read it
One national renovation dataset puts the average Indianapolis kitchen project at about $25,000 — roughly 46% below the national average — while Angi's national range runs from about $14,600 to $41,500.
These are not our prices. They are published Indianapolis kitchen cost research from Angi, Homeyou and Block Renovation, published in 2026, and they are here because it is a fair question and you deserve a starting point. We do not publish our own ranges, because a number written before anyone has seen your house is a guess. What you get from us is a free walkthrough and a written estimate with materials and labor itemized.
What Indianapolis homeowners ask us
How long does an Indianapolis remodeling permit take?
Residential review at the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services typically runs ten to fifteen business days — noticeably longer than Fishers or Carmel. We apply as soon as scope is agreed so the review runs while materials are being ordered rather than after.
Does my contractor need a Marion County licence?
DBNS requires the permit applicant to be either a licensed Marion County contractor or the property owner. It is a fair question to ask any contractor quoting your job, and you should ask it before signing rather than after.
Is my neighbourhood in a historic district?
Thirteen districts and five conservation areas are under Historic Preservation Commission jurisdiction, including Irvington, Fountain Square, Lockerbie Square, Old Northside, Chatham Arch, Herron-Morton Place and Woodruff Place. If yours is one of them, exterior work needs a Certificate of Appropriateness and the timeline is longer. We check the address before quoting.
Do you work all over Indianapolis, or just the north side?
All of Marion County. The northern townships are twelve to twenty-five minutes from Fishers and we are in them constantly. The south and west sides run thirty-five to forty-five. Distance changes how we schedule rather than whether we take the job — far-side work gets run in continuous blocks instead of split across a day, and the estimate carries that schedule.
My Indianapolis house was built in 1925. What is behind the walls?
Usually plaster over wood lath, framing milled to full dimensions a stock jamb does not expect, hub-and-spigot cast iron waste with a lead bend at the toilet, and wiring from three or four decades sharing one panel — sometimes with knob-and-tube still run through the attic. We read the basement and the attic first, because that is where the framing and the wiring are still visible without opening anything up.
Is my Indianapolis basement tall enough to finish?
Measure from the slab to the lowest thing in the room — the trunk duct, the main beam, a drain line — not to the joists. The residential code wants seven feet of finished height in habitable space, and lets beams and ducts drop to six feet four. Post-war basements out in the townships usually clear it. Pre-war basements inside the old city often do not, and we will say so.
Do you take jobs in Beech Grove, Speedway or Southport?
Yes. Those are the excluded municipalities — Unigov left them their own governments, so the building permit may come from the city or town rather than from the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services downtown. The City of Lawrence is the fourth, and it is not the same thing as Lawrence Township. A mailing address does not tell you which applies, so we establish the issuing office from the address before a schedule goes in the estimate.
Why does my Indianapolis basement get water when it rains hard?
It usually starts outside. Clay holds whatever the downspouts drop next to the foundation. Inside the old core there is a second path: those houses sit on Citizens Energy Group's combined sewer, many have footing drains tied straight into it and no sump at all, and when the system surcharges in a heavy storm the water comes up through the floor drain. We follow the water before anyone quotes an interior system.
Do I need new cabinets, or can mine be repainted?
It depends on the boxes, not the doors. If the carcasses are solid and square — which they often are in houses from the eighties and nineties — repainting to a factory-grade finish and changing doors, counter and hardware gets most of the result for a fraction of the price. We tell you which case yours is at the walkthrough.
Can I use the kitchen during the remodel?
Partly, and not for the whole run. There is a stretch with no sink and no counter, and we will tell you at the outset roughly how long it is so you can plan around it rather than discover it.
Is it worth moving the sink or the range?
Only if the layout is genuinely the problem. Moving services brings plumbing, electrical and often a permit with it, and it is the single biggest jump in a kitchen number. If the plan works and only the surfaces are tired, we will say so.
Four steps, from the first call to the last walkthrough in Indianapolis
Call or send the form
Tell us the room and roughly what you want done. We answer our own phone.
Walkthrough & estimate
We measure on site and send a detailed, transparent estimate — materials and labor itemized.
Build
Our own crew, code-compliant work, the site swept at the end of every day.
Final walkthrough
We go through the finished room with you and clear the punch list before we invoice.
What Indianapolis homeowners are actually choosing between
The person who quotes it runs it
The same crew that walked your house builds the job. You are not handed to a project manager who was not there.
Seven trades in-house
Tile, carpentry, flooring, trim, fireplaces, decks and finish work. One point of contact instead of a general contractor and five subs.
An itemized written estimate
Materials and labor, line by line, before anyone picks up a tool. You know the price at step two of four.
We answer our own phone
Call 317-427-8162 and you get the company, not a call centre. Working across Central Indiana since 2012.