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A full kitchen remodel in the DFW metro typically costs between $35,000 and $90,000, with most homeowners in Plano, Frisco, Allen, McKinney, and Richardson landing in the $45,000 to $65,000 range for a mid-range gut and rebuild. Cosmetic refreshes (new paint, hardware, countertops, keeping the existing cabinet boxes) can run as low as $12,000 to $20,000. High-end custom jobs with structural changes, imported stone, and premium appliance packages can push past $100,000.

Cabinets are almost always the single biggest line item, usually 30 to 40 percent of the total budget. After that, countertops, appliances, and labor split most of the rest. The two factors that move a quote the most are whether you're changing the layout (moving plumbing or electrical, taking down a wall) and what tier of cabinets you choose.

A cosmetic refresh, new paint or refacing on existing cabinet boxes, a new backsplash, updated countertops, generally lands between $12,000 and $25,000 and can often be done in two to three weeks. A mid-range remodel, the most common project we see in Collin County, replaces cabinets, countertops, appliances, flooring, and lighting within the existing footprint for $35,000 to $55,000. A full gut renovation that changes the layout, relocates plumbing, or opens a wall typically runs $55,000 to $90,000. Anything past that is usually a high-end custom build with imported materials or a significant structural addition.

What DFW Homeowners Actually Spend Per Square Foot

Across the metro, kitchen remodels run $150 to $350 per square foot depending on finish level. A typical kitchen in a Plano, Frisco, or McKinney home built in the 1990s or 2000s runs 200 to 300 square feet, which is why most quotes for those homes land in the $40,000 to $70,000 band once you factor in the layout and cabinet tier a family actually wants.

Where to Cut Costs Without Cutting Corners

The fastest way to blow a budget is chasing a layout change you don't actually need. If the existing footprint works, keeping plumbing and gas lines where they are saves thousands before you even pick a countertop. Semi-custom cabinets in a standard size range cost significantly less than full custom and, in most kitchens, look identical once installed. Quartz gets you 90 percent of the look of high-end natural stone at a lower price and with less maintenance, which matters in a market where most buyers are comparing your kitchen to newer builds down the street.

Build In a Contingency, Especially in Older Homes

Any kitchen remodel budget should carry a 10 to 15 percent contingency on top of the quoted price. That number matters more in DFW neighborhoods where a lot of homes were built in the 1980s and 1990s, since opening a wall or pulling old cabinets sometimes reveals outdated wiring, undersized plumbing, or subfloor damage that couldn't be seen during the initial walkthrough. Homes from that era were also built to different electrical codes, so a kitchen remodel that adds an island with new outlets or a heavier appliance load can trigger a panel upgrade that wasn't in the original scope. Budgeting for that possibility up front, rather than treating it as a surprise mid-project, keeps a $50,000 remodel from turning into a stressful renegotiation in week three.

The honest answer is that cost depends less on square footage than on how many decisions get made before demo day. We walk every Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. client through a real number, tier by tier, before a single cabinet gets ordered, so there's no gap between the estimate and the final invoice.

Kitchen remodels across Plano, Frisco, and the DFW metro typically run $35,000 to $90,000. See what drives the price and where the money actually goes.

A full kitchen remodel takes 8 to 12 weeks of actual construction, but plan on 3 to 4 months total from your first design meeting to the last punch-list item. The gap between those two numbers is design, material selection, ordering, and permitting, all of which happen before a single cabinet comes out.

The Timeline Before Anything Gets Demolished

Most homeowners underestimate the pre-construction phase because it doesn't feel like progress. Design and layout decisions typically take two to four weeks. Cabinets, whether stock, semi-custom, or full custom, take anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks to arrive after you place the order, and that clock doesn't start until every door style, finish, and hardware choice is locked in. In DFW, where new-construction demand keeps regional suppliers busy, cabinet lead times have been running on the longer end of that range through 2026.

Custom cabinets are the single biggest schedule risk. If you're set on a fully custom order rather than semi-custom, add 4 to 8 weeks to the estimate above. Permitting is the second biggest variable: cities across Collin and Dallas counties have different review times, and a project that moves plumbing or knocks out a wall needs plan review before work starts, which can add one to three weeks depending on the city's current permit volume. The third factor is what's behind your walls. Homes built before the mid-1990s in this area sometimes have outdated wiring or plumbing that doesn't get discovered until demo, and any surprise there adds time while it gets sorted out and, if needed, re-inspected.

How to Keep Your Project on the Shorter End

Lock in every material selection, cabinet finish, countertop slab, tile, hardware, before demo starts, not during. Contractors who let selections drift into the construction phase are the ones whose projects run long, because a crew sitting idle waiting on a decision is still burning calendar days. Ordering long-lead items like custom cabinets or special-order appliances the moment the contract is signed, rather than waiting for demo to start, is the single biggest lever homeowners have over their own timeline.

Certain windows of the year make a DFW kitchen remodel slower or faster. Starting a project in late spring means construction runs through the peak of North Texas summer, which doesn't slow the work itself but does make a kitchen-free house less comfortable if the crew needs to prop doors open for material deliveries. Late fall starts risk running into the holidays, when subcontractor schedules get tighter and some suppliers slow down between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Late winter and early spring tend to be the most predictable stretch for both scheduling and lead times, since it's before the spring rush of listings and remodels that typically picks up across Collin County starting in March.

Living without a kitchen for two to three months is the part people find hardest, not the dust. Setting up a temporary cooking station (microwave, mini-fridge, hot plate) in a garage or dining room makes the middle stretch tolerable. At Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. we build the schedule backward from your target move-back-in date and flag every long-lead item up front, so the estimate you get at signing is the one that actually holds.

A full kitchen remodel takes 8-12 weeks of construction, but 3 to 4 months total once design, ordering, and permitting are factored in. The real timeline.

Yes, a bathroom remodel is worth it in most cases. A midrange bathroom remodel currently returns roughly 70 to 80 percent of its cost at resale nationally, one of the strongest returns of any home improvement project and the highest that figure has been in nearly two decades. That's the financial answer. The livability answer, whether it's worth it for your own day-to-day use, is usually yes even faster, since most homeowners get more use out of a bathroom before they sell than after.

What a Midrange Remodel Actually Includes

A midrange bathroom remodel replaces most surfaces and fixtures within the existing footprint: new flooring, an updated vanity with a quartz or solid-surface top, a new toilet, a refreshed tub-to-shower conversion or shower surround, and better lighting. It doesn't move plumbing or expand the footprint, which is exactly why it costs less than a full gut and returns more per dollar spent.

Why Midrange Beats High-End on Pure Return

ROI percentage isn't the only number that matters. If you're planning to stay in your Plano or Frisco home for another 8 to 10 years, a full primary bath renovation, curbless shower, double vanity, real layout improvements, pays you back in daily use long before you'd ever sell. The math changes if you're listing within the next year or two: in that case, a clean midrange refresh (new vanity, updated tile, modern fixtures, fresh paint) gets you nearly all the resale benefit at a fraction of the cost of a full renovation.

What Actually Moves the Needle With Buyers

Dated tile and old fixtures are the two things buyers notice fastest walking into a bathroom, especially in DFW neighborhoods where a lot of housing stock still has original 1990s and early-2000s finishes. Updated lighting, a walk-in shower in the primary bath, and a vanity that doesn't look like it came with the house are the highest-impact, lowest-cost changes you can make. Full tub removal only helps resale if the home has at least one other bathtub elsewhere, since families shopping in this market still expect one somewhere in the house.

How DFW Home Age Factors Into the Decision

A lot of the housing stock in Plano, Richardson, and parts of Allen and McKinney was built between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, and most of those homes are on their original bathroom fixtures or a single prior update. That age gap works in a remodel's favor: a dated bathroom stands out sharply against neighboring homes that have already updated, which is part of why the ROI on bathroom remodels has stayed strong even as overall renovation spending has cooled nationally. In newer construction across Frisco and far McKinney, where more homes already have contemporary bathrooms, the return on a remodel is still solid but the competitive gap it closes is smaller, since you're not as far behind the neighborhood baseline to begin with.

The short version: a midrange bathroom remodel is close to a sure bet financially, and the daily-use payoff for your own family starts the day it's finished. Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. scopes every bathroom project against both numbers, resale return and how long you actually plan to enjoy it, before recommending a tier.

A midrange bathroom remodel returns roughly 70-80% of its cost at resale, the best ROI of any major renovation. Here's what that means for DFW homeowners.

Most DFW homeowners remodeling a primary bathroom right now are replacing the tub with a larger walk-in shower, but keeping at least one tub somewhere else in the house. National surveys show replacing a bathtub with a walk-in shower as the single most requested bathroom update over the next few years, and that trend is showing up clearly in the primary suites we work on across Plano, Frisco, Allen, and McKinney.

Most adults simply don't use the tub in their primary bathroom. It sits there collecting bottles of bath products nobody opens, while the shower gets used daily. Once that pattern is obvious, homeowners start asking why they're dedicating 15 to 20 square feet of their primary bath to a fixture that gets used a handful of times a year. Converting that space to a larger walk-in shower, often frameless glass, a bench, and a rain head, turns dead space into the feature of the room.

Here's the part that keeps this from hurting resale value: as long as the home has a tub somewhere, a hall bath, a secondary bathroom, a guest bath, removing the primary tub doesn't scare off buyers. Families with young kids still want a tub in the house, they just don't need it in the primary suite. Homes with only one bathroom, or where the primary is the only bath with a tub, are the exception. In that situation we typically recommend keeping some kind of tub, even a compact one, to keep the home marketable to the widest range of buyers.

What a Tub-to-Shower Conversion Actually Costs

A straightforward tub-to-shower conversion in the DFW metro typically runs $6,000 to $15,000 depending on shower size, glass type, and tile selection, with simpler surround-and-pan jobs on the lower end and full custom tile showers with frameless glass on the higher end. Expanding the footprint (pushing into a closet or adjacent space for a genuinely larger shower) adds to that, but the conversion itself, without moving walls, is usually the more budget-friendly bathroom project homeowners take on.

What to Prioritize If You're Making the Switch

A curbless or low-threshold entry is worth the extra framing cost, it looks cleaner and works for aging in place without looking clinical. Frameless glass reads as more current than a framed enclosure and tends to make a smaller bathroom feel larger. A built-in bench and a handheld shower head alongside a rain head give the space actual function, not just a design upgrade.

What If You Want to Reclaim the Space Instead

Some homeowners take the tub-to-shower conversion a step further and reclaim square footage rather than just resizing the shower. Pulling the shower wall back toward where the tub used to sit can open room for a linen cabinet, a second shower entry, or a slightly larger vanity footprint, especially in primary baths built in the 1990s and 2000s where the tub and shower were boxed in as two separate small fixtures. This kind of reconfiguration costs more than a straight swap since it usually involves moving the drain and sometimes the supply lines, but it produces a noticeably different feeling room rather than just a bigger version of the same layout.

If you're on the fence about losing the tub, walk through how often it actually gets used first. Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. can also show you what a shower-only primary looks like against keeping a tub in a secondary bath, so the decision is based on how your household actually lives, not just what's trending.

Most DFW homeowners are converting primary bathtubs to walk-in showers, but keeping at least one tub elsewhere in the house. Here's the current trend and why.

In most DFW cities, including Plano, Frisco, Allen, McKinney, and Richardson, you need a permit for any kitchen or bathroom remodel that moves or adds plumbing, changes electrical wiring or circuits, alters a load-bearing or non-load-bearing wall, or modifies gas lines. Purely cosmetic work, painting, swapping cabinet hardware, replacing a faucet on existing plumbing, doesn't typically require one. The specific thresholds vary slightly by city, but that's the general line every municipality in the metro draws.

Replacing a faucet, showerhead, or light fixture on existing wiring or plumbing generally doesn't need a permit. Neither does repainting, replacing cabinet doors or hardware, or installing new countertops on cabinets that stay in place. The general test cities use is whether the work touches life-safety systems, electrical, plumbing, gas, structure, or just changes the surface finish.

Skipping a required permit doesn't just risk a fine. Unpermitted electrical or plumbing work can become a real problem at resale, since a home inspector or buyer's agent can flag it, and some buyers' lenders require proof of permits for any work that touched systems like plumbing or electrical. It can also affect your homeowner's insurance if a claim ever traces back to unpermitted work. A contractor who tells you permits aren't necessary for a project that clearly involves moving plumbing or adding circuits is one of the clearest red flags in this industry, because it usually means they're either not licensed to pull the permit or trying to avoid the inspection that would catch shortcuts.

Permit costs in this area are generally modest relative to project size, often in the low hundreds of dollars for a standard kitchen or bath remodel, with structural or larger commercial-adjacent projects running higher. Review timelines vary by city and current volume, simple electrical or plumbing permits can clear in a few business days, while anything involving structural plan review can take one to three weeks. Work usually can't start (or at least can't pass the required inspections) until the permit is issued, and most cities require a final inspection before the project is considered closed out.

Plano, Frisco, Allen, McKinney, and Richardson each run their own building department, so the exact permit application process, fee schedule, and inspection scheduling window differ slightly even though the underlying rules are similar. A homeowner who remodeled a kitchen in Frisco five years ago shouldn't assume the process in McKinney or Richardson will look identical, especially around online permitting portals and how far in advance inspections need to be scheduled. This is one more reason a contractor's local experience matters: a crew that pulls permits regularly in your specific city already knows the reviewer's expectations, which cuts down on the back-and-forth that slows down first-time applicants.

If a contractor's quote doesn't mention who's pulling permits and when, ask directly before signing anything. On every Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. project that touches plumbing, electrical, or a wall, permitting and inspections are built into the schedule and the price from day one, not treated as an optional add-on.

Permits are required for any DFW remodel that moves plumbing, changes wiring, or alters walls. Cosmetic-only updates usually don't need one. The breakdown.

Choose a kitchen remodeling contractor by verifying their license and insurance, getting a detailed written contract with a specific scope and payment schedule, and checking recent local references, not just online star ratings. Most kitchen remodel disasters trace back to skipping one of those three steps, not to picking the wrong cabinet color.

Red Flags That Should End the Conversation

Texas doesn't require a general statewide contractor license, which makes it easier for unqualified operators to hang out a shingle, so the verification burden falls on you. What you can and should verify: the license and insurance of any electrician or plumber working under them (those trades are state-licensed in Texas), general liability insurance covering the contractor's own crew, and a certificate of insurance you can actually see, not just a claim that it exists. Ask for two or three references from projects completed in the last year, ideally in your own city, since permit and inspection norms vary enough between Plano, Frisco, McKinney, and Richardson that recent local experience actually matters.

A contract worth signing spells out the full scope of work room by room, specific material brands and models (not "quality cabinets" or "granite countertops" with no further detail), a payment schedule tied to project milestones rather than the calendar, a realistic timeline with named phases, and what happens if hidden issues, old wiring, water damage, structural surprises, turn up once demo starts. If a contractor can't produce this level of detail before you sign, that's a preview of how the rest of the project will be managed.

Collecting three written bids for the same defined scope of work is still the single best way to sanity-check pricing, even after you've settled on a contractor you like. It's not about chasing the lowest number, it's about seeing where one bid diverges sharply from the other two, on cabinet allowance, on labor, on the countertop line item, since that gap usually points to either a scope difference worth clarifying or a corner someone's planning to cut. A contractor confident in their pricing won't discourage you from getting other bids, and most experienced homeowners in this market have learned that the contractor who welcomes the comparison is usually the one whose number holds up.

The lowest bid rarely ends up being the cheapest project once change orders, delays, and rework get factored in. A contractor who answers these questions clearly, in writing, without getting defensive, is telling you more about how the project will go than any showroom display ever will. Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. puts license and insurance documentation, a full written scope, and a milestone-based payment schedule in front of every client before a contract is signed, because that's the stuff that actually determines whether a remodel goes smoothly.

Vet a kitchen remodeling contractor on license, insurance, a detailed written contract, and payment schedule before signing. Red flags to walk away from.

What Plano homeowners ask before they hire us.

How Much Does a Kitchen Remodel Cost in DFW?

How Long Does a Kitchen Remodel Actually Take?

Is a Bathroom Remodel Worth It? What You Actually Get Back at Resale

Walk-In Shower vs. Tub: What Are DFW Homeowners Actually Choosing Now?

Do You Need a Permit to Remodel a Kitchen or Bathroom in Texas?

How to Choose a Kitchen Remodeling Contractor (Red Flags to Avoid)

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