What a Full Kitchen Remodel in Fort Myers Actually Entails, and What You’ll Spend
A full kitchen remodel in Fort Myers means taking the room down to the studs and rebuilding it with a new floor plan, new electrical and plumbing rough-ins, new drywall, new cabinetry, countertops, flooring, and fixtures. You’re looking at 6 to 12 weeks of construction and an investment that typically lands between $14,000 and $45,000 in this market, depending on square footage, material grade, and how much the layout changes. Call us at (844) 638-7249 to walk through your home’s numbers.
We are not talking about swapping cabinet doors or glazing a backsplash. We’re talking about a gut renovation and a finished room that looks and functions differently than it did before. In a Fort Myers home built before 2002, the wall we open up on day one rarely matches the plan we drew on paper, and that reality drives both cost and timeline.
How We Take a Fort Myers Kitchen From Demolition to Finished Room
We follow a rigid sequence because the Lee County inspection schedule demands it. Every stage below gets a rough and a final inspection from the county, and skipping or short-cutting one is how unpermitted work ends up flagged when you try to sell the home. Here’s what five weeks to twelve weeks actually look like.
Stage 1: Demolition and rough discovery (3-5 days). We remove all cabinets, countertops, flooring, and drywall down to the studs. This is when we discover what the original builder did. In Fort Myers block homes from the McGregor corridor, we regularly find corroded tie-down straps, termite sill damage, and electrical that was spliced into over four decades without a permit. We bring the framing and wiring up to current Florida Building Code before a single new board goes in. You’ll make zero aesthetic decisions here. The only decision is structural and it is ours: whether the subfloor or load-bearing wall needs to be sistered or replaced.
Stage 2: Rough-in and first inspection (5-8 days). Our electricians and plumbers run new circuits, GFCI-protected outlets, dedicated appliance lines, water supply lines, and drain lines to the new fixture locations. If you’re relocating a sink, a range, or adding an island with plumbing, this is where it happens. The county inspector walks the job after rough-in. We do not cover a single stud with drywall until that inspection card is signed, because failing a covered rough-in in Lee County costs time and money that no homeowner should absorb.
Stage 3: Drywall, taping, and paint (7-10 days). Hang, tape, mud, sand, prime, paint. We use mold-resistant green board behind the sink and any wet-prep areas, which matters in Fort Myers’s humidity. This is the stage where you’ll lock in your exact cabinet paint color and wall finish, because once the primer is on, any “we’ll decide later” delays the schedule.
Stage 4: Cabinetry, countertops, and flooring (8-15 days). Semi-custom or stock cabinets arrive and get installed on a perfectly level base. We template for countertops after the cabinets are set. Stone fabrication takes 7-10 days in this market. Flooring goes in after the cabinets but before the final base trim and appliance drop-in. Homeowners doing a Full Bathroom Remodeling in Fort Myers at the same time often try to sync this stage across both rooms to share the mess.
Stage 5: Backsplash, trim, fixtures, appliances, and final inspections (5-7 days). Tile backsplash, under-cabinet lighting, faucets, sink, disposal, dishwasher line, range connection, hood venting. A final electrical and plumbing inspection closes the permit. We then do a full walkthrough with you, start the 730-Day Done Right Promise clock, and hand you a finished room.
The Material and Layout Calls You’ll Make Before We Order Anything
Every full kitchen remodel we do in Fort Myers gets an hour-long design consult before we write a final estimate. These are the actual choices that determine whether your job lands at $15,000 or $40,000. Each has a real-dollar consequence that we put in writing before you sign.
- Cabinet construction: stock vs. semi-custom vs. custom. Stock boxes in standard sizes and finishes keep the budget lean and ship fast - think 2-3 weeks. Semi-custom lets you adjust depths, heights, and door styles without going full bespoke. Custom cabinetmakers here in Southwest Florida charge a premium driven by post-Ian demand, and the lead time can stretch to 10 weeks. We’ll show you KraftMaid and other lines that let you pick a tier that fits the rest of the project’s budget.
- Countertop material: laminate, quartz, granite, or solid surface. A basic post-form laminate top runs a fraction of what a slab of quartz costs. Quartz gives you a seamless, non-porous surface that handles Fort Myers’s humidity without annual sealing. Cambria quartz is what we spec on most mid-to-high-end remodels because the color consistency means no slab-lot surprises. Natural granite costs less than quartz but needs sealing and can stain if a wine bottle gets ignored overnight.
- Flooring: luxury vinyl plank, tile, or engineered hardwood. LVP handles moisture, costs less, and installs fast. Large-format porcelain tile looks upscale and stays cool underfoot in a Florida summer. Engineered hardwood is the most expensive and the riskiest in a kitchen that sees wet feet from the pool, but it is what a lot of higher-end McGregor corridor homes demand. We’ll lay out the installed cost per square foot for all three so you can choose what fits the home and the budget.
- Layout scope: same footprint or wall-moving. Keeping plumbing and electrical in the same walls is the single biggest cost-saver in a full kitchen remodel. Moving a sink or range ten feet adds rough-in labor, vent pipe rework, and potentially a structural beam if the wall we’re opening was load-bearing. In a 1950s block home, that load-bearing discovery changes the project’s price and timeline in one afternoon.
What a Full Kitchen Remodel Costs in Fort Myers
A full kitchen remodel in Fort Myers runs from about $14,000 for a modest-sized kitchen with stock cabinets and laminate tops up to $45,000 and beyond for a large, layout-changing renovation with semi-custom cabinets, quartz counters, custom tile, and new high-end appliances. The number you get from us is a written, line-item estimate with no allowance ballparks that can drift later.
Five variables push a project toward the high or low end of that range.
- Square footage. A 100-square-foot galley kitchen costs less to demo, drywall, floor, and light than a 300-square-foot open-plan kitchen with a large island.
- Existing condition. In older Fort Myers homes, we routinely open walls and find corroded galvanized supply lines, cloth-wrapped wiring, and termite-damaged studs. Bringing those up to code adds cost that a newer post-2002 home rarely incurs.
- Plumbing and electrical relocation. Keeping the sink and appliances in their original footprint avoids rework on drains, vents, and sub-panel circuits. Moving the kitchen sink to an island, for example, requires breaking into the slab to run new drain lines - a multi-day, multi-trade task.
- Material grade. The spread between a stock shaker door and a custom inset door is real. Quartz slab costs more than laminate. The backsplash can be $3-per-square-foot subway tile or a $40-per-square-foot artisan glass installation. Every choice lands somewhere on that spectrum, and we’ll show you the numbers before you commit.
- Permit and inspection scope. A same-footprint remodel has a straightforward permit path and roughly 3-4 inspections. Adding square footage, moving load-bearing walls, or upgrading the electrical service pulls in a more complex review and higher permit fees. That sits on your invoice as a reimbursable line item we estimate up front.
Every Groundwork Construction Co. estimate is a fixed price for the scope we agree on. You’ll see separate line items for demolition, framing, electrical, plumbing, drywall, cabinetry, countertops, flooring, backsplash, painting, and the permit fee. If the county inspector requires something we could not have predicted - and in post-Ian Fort Myers, that happens - we write a change order and you approve it before the extra work starts. That is how upfront pricing, no surprises works in practice when we’re dealing with a 60-year-old home’s hidden conditions.
What Fort Myers Homes Specifically Do to This Job
Fort Myers kitchens sit inside a housing stock that was built across a half-century of shifting codes, and a gut renovation forces all of it into the present-day Florida Building Code. The concrete-block homes along the McGregor corridor and in neighborhoods like Edison Park went up before wind-load strapping and impact-glazing requirements existed. When we strip a kitchen to the studs, we often find roof-to-wall connectors that do not meet current 160+ mph wind design standards, and the opening we cut for a new window or patio slider must now accommodate impact-rated glazing per Lee County code. That is not an upgrade. It is a requirement, and it will appear as a separate line on your estimate.
Many Fort Myers homes also sit inside FEMA AE flood zones where the county enforces finished floor elevation rules that some homeowners have never had to consider before a remodel. If the kitchen is on a slab and the slab is below Base Flood Elevation plus freeboard, the electrical outlets and any new appliances may need to be raised or protected in ways that a dry-market remodel would never involve. We have navigated dozens of post-Ian remodels where this came up, and we bring it into the conversation before the first wall comes down, not after the inspector flags it.
The contractor climate here also shapes how homeowners vet the person holding the hammer. After Hurricane Ian, Lee County saw a surge of unlicensed crews who took deposits on kitchen and whole-home rehabs and then vanished. Homeowners have gotten burned in ways that people in Naples or Sarasota had the luxury of not experiencing. We are a state-licensed contractor with a 730-Day Done Right Promise and a live person answering the phone 24/7, and we put our Lee County license number on every written estimate - because in this market, that documentation alone is a differentiator.
Serving Fort Myers, FL - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Fort Myers area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage - if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
Frequently Asked Questions About Full Kitchen Remodeling in Fort Myers
Plan on 6 to 12 weeks from the day we start demolition to the final county inspection sign-off. A same-footprint remodel with no structural surprises can finish in about 6-7 weeks. A project that moves plumbing, opens load-bearing walls, or waits on custom cabinetry and stone fabrication pushes toward 10-12. We’ll give you a start-to-finish calendar, not an oral promise, and it includes the Lee County inspection wait times we’re actually seeing that month.
Yes. A full kitchen remodel that moves or replaces electrical circuits, plumbing lines, or any wall requires a building permit with electrical, plumbing, and possibly mechanical sub-permits through Lee County. We pull the permits, we post the job card, and we call in every inspection. Skipping permits to save time or money is a false economy. It catches up with you at resale, at insurance renewal, or when an unpermitted circuit fails. Call (844) 638-7249 if you want to know exactly what your specific scope requires.
You can, and doing so contains both cost and timeline. We leave the sink, dishwasher, and range in their existing locations, replace the cabinets and countertops within those parameters, and upgrade the wiring and plumbing in place. The kitchen looks entirely new but the rough infrastructure stays where it was. This is the most common path we take in older Fort Myers homes where solid concrete-block interior walls would require structural engineering to move. For many homeowners, a same-footprint full remodel with a Full Bathroom Remodeling done concurrently delivers the best value per dollar.
Every full kitchen remodel we complete is backed by our 730-Day Done Right Promise. If something we installed or built does not perform as specified within two full years of the completion date, we return and fix it at our cost. That covers workmanship across every trade that was part of your project - cabinetry, countertops, tile, electrical, plumbing, drywall, and paint. Manufacturer warranties on the materials themselves (appliances, faucets, stone, flooring) run separately and we’ll hand you the full documentation at the final walkthrough.
In today’s Fort Myers market, $25,000 typically gets you a same-footprint remodel of roughly 150-180 square feet with solid mid-grade finishes: semi-custom or upgraded stock cabinets, a quartz countertop, a tile or LVP floor, a simple ceramic tile backsplash, new under-mount sink and faucet, dedicated appliance circuits, and full drywall and paint. It does not usually include relocating plumbing or load-bearing walls, and it does not cover high-end custom cabinetry or premium slab materials. Call (844) 638-7249 and we’ll walk your actual kitchen and give you a line-item number, not a ballpark.
Get a Written, Fixed-Price Estimate for Your Full Kitchen Remodel in Fort Myers
A full kitchen remodel is the single most disruptive and rewarding project most homeowners ever take on. You should know exactly what it costs before you commit a single dollar. Call Derek and the Kitchen Remodeling team at Groundwork Construction Co. at (844) 638-7249 to schedule a free, no-pressure on-site estimate. We’ll measure, discuss your layout and material preferences, hand you a written, line-item proposal, and leave you to decide on your own timeline. Calls are answered by a live person, 24/7. The 730-Day Done Right Promise is included in every bid, and as part of a larger Kitchen Remodeling in Fort Myers plan, we can also look at how a Walk-In Showers & Shower Remodeling project could be sequenced to share the disruption.
Written by Derek Hollenbeck, Owner at Groundwork Construction Co., serving Fort Myers since 2014.