How to Start a Kitchen and Bath Remodeling Business

How do you start a kitchen and bath remodeling business from scratch?

Start by picking a niche, getting licensed and insured, then price one small job you can finish clean. Most remodelers begin with bath refreshes and cabinet refacing before taking on full kitchens.

The trap in this trade is starting at the top. A full kitchen is 6 to 12 weeks with cabinet lead times, a countertop template date, three subs and a homeowner living without a sink. Get that wrong on job one and you spend your first year working for free to fix it. Vanity swaps, cabinet refacing and tub to shower conversions are one to two week jobs with the same customer, the same referral sources and a fraction of the scope risk.

• Pick your lane first: bathrooms only, cabinet refacing only, or full kitchen and bath. Bathrooms are the fastest cash cycle and the easiest to sell as a first job.
• Check your state before you spend a dollar. California requires a license at $1,000 of combined labor and material, Nevada requires one for any paid work at all, Texas has no state license and pushes it to each city.
• Form an LLC and get an EIN. Budget $150 to $500 for formation plus local business licensing.
• Get EPA Lead RRP certified. Firm certification is $300 for five years and individual renovator training averages $186. Most pre-1978 kitchens and baths are covered work, and it is federal law, not a nice-to-have.
• Buy general liability before your first jobsite. Remodeling contractors average $81 to $90 per month, and a Business Owner's Policy that bundles property runs about $102 per month.
• Open trade accounts at a plumbing distributor like Ferguson and a trade-only showroom like ProSource. Wholesale pricing on tile, fixtures and cabinets is a margin lever you get on day one.
• Write a real contract with a change order form attached. Deposit, draw schedule, written allowance amounts, and a line that says unpriced change orders do not get built.
• Sell three small jobs before you sell a kitchen. You need photos, a track record on hours, and proof your bid math works when your own labor is priced into it.

How much does it cost to start a kitchen and bath remodeling business?

A lean solo start totals $7,600 to $17,200 by the line items below. Around $5,000 is only true if you already own the tools and the truck. Established: $21,800 to $51,600.

The line missing from this table is a vehicle, and it is usually the biggest check you write. Prices for a used cargo van or work pickup swing too far by region and mileage to quote honestly, so no figure here would survive contact with your local market. What the table does show is where the famous $5,000 number comes from: strip the $2,800 tool line out of the lean minimum of $7,596 and you land at $4,796. That is a real number, and it is only real if you already own a wet saw, a combo kit and something that can haul a demo load.

What licenses, certifications and insurance does a kitchen and bath remodeler need?

California licenses at $1,000 of combined labor and materials, Nevada licenses any paid work, Texas has no state license. EPA Lead RRP firm certification is federal, mandatory, and costs $300 for five years.

Nobody can tell you your requirement from a web page, because contractor licensing in the US is state level and the spread is enormous. Three things are universal: the EPA Lead RRP rule, the OSHA silica rule, and the fact that your plumber and electrician subs are licensed at state level even in Texas, where you are not.

• California CSLB: license required at $1,000 combined labor and materials. Class B General Building or Class B-2 Residential Remodeling. Four years journeyman experience, a two-part PSI exam, a $25,000 surety bond at $100 to $500 a year, and a fee stack of $1,000 to $1,500 ($450 application, $200 initial fee for a sole owner, $70 to $90 Live Scan). LLCs also carry a separate $100,000 worker bond.
• Florida DBPR: Residential, Building or General tiers. Four years experience, or up to three years of education plus one year of work. Application $249, or $149 filed before April 30 in an even year, which 2026 is. Pearson VUE exam $295. Renewal $205 plus $50 to qualify an entity.
• Texas: no state contractor license. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin each register separately, so a metroplex operator needs three or more registrations.
• Arizona ROC: required over $1,000 of total contract value, with volume-based bonding starting near $1,000 for a small residential specialty firm.
• Nevada NSCB: no dollar threshold at all. Any paid construction work needs a license. $600 biennial fee after the board sets your bond, which it sizes case by case anywhere from $1,000 to $500,000.
• EPA Lead RRP: firm certification $300 for five years, recertification also $300, renovator training averaging $186 per person for five years. Required in pre-1978 housing and child-occupied facilities.
• OSHA silica, 29 CFR 1926.1153: handheld tile saws count as handheld power saws under Table 1. Use wet methods and vacuum-shrouded tools and you skip air monitoring and the PEL entirely. A serious violation is $16,550, a willful or repeat one is $165,514, and failure to abate is $16,550 per day. Those are 2025 levels carried into 2026.
• Optional credentials that close jobs: NKBA CKBD, which has run as low as $399 in a promotional bundle and requires 30 accredited credit hours plus 75 percent on all three exam parts, and NARI Certified Remodeler, which requires five years continuous industry experience and a 200 question, four hour proctored exam. NARI does not publish the initial fee; the retest is $50.
• Insurance to carry: general liability at $81 to $90 per month, a tools and equipment floater at about $49 per month, and an installation floater. That last one matters because the client's cabinets sitting in your trailer and the slab on your truck are usually excluded from standard general liability under care, custody or control.
• Workers' compensation the moment you hire. Class code 5437, cabinet and trim carpentry, runs $2.50 per $100 of payroll in Oregon and $11.75 in Minnesota. Code 5645 runs $3.51 in North Dakota and $43.42 in Georgia. On a $120,000 payroll that spread is $3,000 versus $52,100. The wrong code is a business-ending line item.

What should you charge for kitchen and bath remodeling jobs?

Price the job, not the hour. Mid-range kitchens run $35,000 to $70,000, bathrooms $10,000 to $30,000. Use 40 to 50 percent markup, applied to a cost that includes your own hours.

Here is a real job, priced the way most new remodelers price it. The Alvarez family wants the hall bath tub pulled and replaced with a tiled walk-in shower, and you bid $8,400. Materials: Schluter KERDI-SHOWER-KIT with tray, drain and membrane at $610; six sheets of half inch cement board at $10 each for $60; 90 square feet of porcelain at $6 for $540; unmodified thinset, grout, screws and corners at $250; pressure balance valve, trim and a glass panel at $1,400; dumpster $400. That is $3,260. Six working days: one to demo and haul, one and a half to hang board and set the pan and membrane, two and a half to tile at the 25 to 45 square feet per day a niched shower wall actually runs, one to grout, set glass and trim out. Helper at $28 an hour for 48 hours is $1,344. Licensed plumber to move the drain and set the valve, six hours at $150, is $900. Permit $300, and bathroom permits run $200 to $800 nationally; Denver's published schedule on a $15,000 bath comes to $287. Direct cost before your own labor: $5,804. You keep $2,596 for 48 hours on the tools, which is $54 an hour and nothing else.

Now price yourself in properly, because that is the whole lesson. Your 48 hours at $45 is $2,160 of direct labor, so true direct cost is $7,964 and gross profit is $436, a 5.2 percent margin, not the 29.9 percent industry average. To hit 29.9 percent you need to bid $11,360. A 40 percent markup on $7,964 gets you $11,150 and a 50 percent markup gets $11,946. Markup and margin are not the same number: 40 percent markup yields a 28.6 percent margin, 50 percent yields 33.3 percent. And the 2026 national average for a walk-in shower install is $9,500 to $11,000. That is not a coincidence. The market price is what it is because the work costs what it costs, and your $8,400 was never a price, it was a donation.

Location moves everything on top of that. California, New York and Massachusetts run 30 to 45 percent above the national average and Southern and Midwestern states run 15 to 25 percent below. A $35,000 Dallas kitchen is roughly $55,000 in San Francisco. GC hourly rates run $120 to $180 in Manhattan and $45 to $65 in Jackson, Mississippi. Never price off a national average. Price off three quotes you have actually lost in your own zip code.

How do you get your first kitchen and bath remodeling customers?

Work the housing stock, not the internet. Door hangers in pre-1985 subdivisions, a paid referral loop with plumbers and electricians, and finished-shower photos on a Google Business Profile fill your first calendar.

Run the numbers on a $300 flyer drop. Two thousand door hangers at fifteen cents each, walked through a subdivision built in 1978 where every hall bath still has the original one piece tub surround. Say it produces exactly one job: a vanity swap plus a tile floor in a 40 square foot bath at $3,200. Materials are a $650 vanity, $280 for the top with integrated bowl and a faucet, 45 square feet of tile at $4 for $180, $110 in backer board, thinset and grout, and $30 in wax ring and misc. That is $1,250. You do it solo in two days, so $1,950 gross on 16 hours, or $122 an hour on the tools. The drop pays for itself if one door in two thousand converts, a 0.05 percent close rate. That is the number to beat, and it is a low bar. What the $122 is not is take-home: insurance, fuel, the phone and the two hours you spent quoting jobs you lost all come out of it.

The referral loop matters more than the flyers long term. Licensed plumbers and electricians get asked about remodels constantly and they do not want the tile or the cabinets. Take four of them to lunch, hand them cards, and pay a flat $250 the week a referred job closes. One plumber who trusts you beats any ad budget you can afford in year one.

• Set up a Google Business Profile the first week and post finished-shower photos weekly. Before, during and after, always shot from the same corner.
• Door hangers beat mailers here because you can target by build era. Pre-1985 subdivisions still have original baths. Pre-1978 also means your Lead RRP certification is a selling point, not just a cost.
• Get on the referral list at a trade-only showroom. They send leads to the installers who buy from them.
• Do two jobs at cost for homeowners who will let you photograph everything. Ask for the review afterward, and never tie it to the price, because that violates Google's review policy and can get the profile pulled.
• Quote from inside the bathroom, not the driveway. Pull the access panel, look under the vanity, check the subfloor at the toilet flange. Half your scope risk is visible in ten minutes and invisible from a phone call.
• Leave a written scope, an allowance schedule and a start date before you leave the house. A verbal ballpark loses to a printed proposal every time.

What tools and equipment do you actually need to remodel kitchens and baths?

The anchor tool is a 10 inch wet tile saw, the DeWalt D24000S, at $730 to $1,175. Then a cordless combo kit, a track saw, a miter saw, and a green beam laser.

Buy the wet saw first and buy it good. The D24000S has listed anywhere from $730 to $1,175 depending on where and when you buy, and its 24 inch rip is what lets you cut a full 24 inch porcelain plank without a seam. Everything in a bath job is downstream of clean tile cuts, and a wandering fence costs you more in scrapped porcelain and rework than the price gap. Wet cutting is also your OSHA silica Table 1 compliance, so one purchase closes a $16,550 exposure.

• Pick one waterproofing system and stay on it. The KERDI kit already includes the membrane, so you do not also roll RedGard over it. Sheet membrane or liquid membrane, not both, and follow that manufacturer's detail end to end.
• Job costing is the only software that earns its seat in year one: quoted hours against actual hours, per job. Everything else is a nice-to-have until you have twenty jobs of data to look at.
• Get a change order form a homeowner can sign on a phone in under a minute. The paper version is the one that never gets signed.
• Buy a second full crew kit before you hire your second person, not after. A helper standing around waiting for the impact driver is the most expensive tool you own.

What should your first 90 days as a remodeling contractor look like?

Weeks 1 and 2 are paperwork: license, insurance, EPA Lead RRP. Weeks 3 to 6 open trade accounts and build a photo portfolio. Weeks 7 to 12 sell and finish small jobs.

Put a number on three to five small jobs so the target is real. Two vanity swaps at $1,600, one cabinet refacing at $6,000 and one tub to shower conversion at $11,000 is $20,200 booked. At the 29.9 percent industry gross margin that is $6,040 of gross profit across six weeks, which covers your $588 tools floater, roughly $1,000 of the year's general liability, fuel, and about a month of living. That is not a business yet. It is the data set that tells you whether your bid math survives contact with a real jobsite.

What mistakes kill new kitchen and bath remodeling businesses?

Cash flow, not craftsmanship. It drives about 82 percent of contractor failures and the average contractor waits 83 days to get paid. Unpriced change orders and shower leaks finish the job.

About 30 percent of construction companies fail in the first year and nearly half within five. Almost none of them fail because the owner could not set tile. They fail because $18,000 of cabinets and stone for a $45,000 kitchen went out the door before a single draw came back in, and the client pays on day 83.

• Waterproofing a shower wrong. This is the trade's signature failure. Not pre-sloping before the waterproofing layer, or leaving the drain weep holes unprotected, traps water under the tile and rots the thinset. Bad curb corners are the second leak source. Using water-resistant wallboard where waterproof is required is the third. Follow the TCNA Handbook detail and photograph every membrane before you tile over it.
• Change orders that get built but never priced, approved and billed. Three at $600 each is $1,800. Net profit on a $35,000 kitchen at the industry average 6.3 percent is $2,205, so you just handed back 82 percent of the job's profit for work you already did.
• Pricing at new-construction markup. Remodelers use 40 to 50 percent because you cannot see behind the wall when you bid. Quote at 20 percent and one rotted subfloor eats the whole job.
• Draw schedules that fund the client instead of the job. Deposit at signing, draw at rough-in, draw at cabinet set, final at punch list. Never buy a $7,000 countertop out of your own pocket.
• Selling a full kitchen before you understand lead times. RTA cabinets are 1 to 2 weeks, assembled 2 to 4, custom and semi-custom currently 8 to 16. Stone countertops need another 2 to 4 weeks for template and fabrication, and the fabricator will not template until base cabinets are set. Promise six weeks, deliver twelve, lose the review.
• Failing the bathroom electrical inspection. GFCI protection is required for every 125V 15A and 20A bathroom receptacle, and the room itself triggers it with no distance exemption. At least one receptacle within 36 inches of the outside edge of each lavatory basin, and none inside the tub or shower or within 3 feet horizontally of it.
• Wrong workers' comp classification. Fixing the code and shopping carriers has cut carpenter premiums 35 to 40 percent across an analysis of a thousand-plus quotes, and the code spread runs $2.50 to $43.42 per $100 of payroll.
• Taking work outside your expertise because the money looked good. A structural wall or a whole-house rewire bolted onto a bath job is how a profitable quarter turns into a lawsuit.

Is a kitchen and bath remodeling business worth it?

Yes, if you survive the cash crunch. Residential remodelers averaged 29.9 percent gross and 6.3 percent net margin in 2024. Median remodeler revenue is $1.8 million with five employees.

Set year one expectations honestly. There is no survey-grade number for a first-year solo remodeler. The one figure that exists is a single anecdote of about $80,000 in annual revenue on basic residential work, so treat it as the shape of the thing, not a promise. What is solid: nearly 80 percent of specialty trade firms are self-employed independent contractors, and two out of three bring in under $1 million.

The ceiling is real though. The median remodeler runs $1.8 million with five employees, which is about $300,000 of revenue per person once you count the owner as the sixth. The average firm does $2.7 million, and 6.3 percent net on that is $170,100 before owner compensation. NARI tells its members to target 35 to 40 percent gross rather than the 29.9 percent average, and the gap between gross and net is mostly warranty callbacks and project variability, which in this trade means shower leaks. Get waterproofing right and you keep several points of net your competitors give back.

• Market backdrop: owner-occupied improvement spending is projected at $518 billion to $524 billion a year through 2026, growing 1.6 to 2.9 percent. Steady, not a boom.
• The fastest path to real money is not more jobs. It is fewer callbacks and every change order priced.
• Trade contractor costs fell from 36 percent of remodeler revenue in 2021 to 30 percent in 2024, which is exactly why average gross margin recovered five points from the 24.9 percent record low.

When is the busy season for kitchen and bath remodeling?

Spring and summer are peak, fall is the rush to finish before the holidays, and December through March is the slow stretch. Sell bathrooms and order cabinets while lead times are short.

This is interior work, so weather is not the driver. Homeowner scheduling is. People do not tear out a kitchen in December and nobody wants a job running through Thanksgiving. That gives you a predictable dip you can plan around instead of panic through.

How do you compete with big remodeling franchises on price?

Do not match their price. Refacing and one day bath franchises sell speed and a warranty. You win on tile work they will not do, real design help, and trade-only pricing.

• The franchise model is one product installed fast. A tiled shower with a custom niche, a curbless entry or an out-of-square 1970s alcove is where their script breaks and your bid wins.
• Trade-only supply channels close the price gap. Wholesale showroom pricing on tile and fixtures without the retail markup is how a two person shop bids against a national buyer.
• Sell the schedule honestly. Franchises quote a day and homeowners have heard the stories. A written 6 to 12 week kitchen timeline with the 8 to 16 week cabinet lead time spelled out reads as competence.
• Offer a written workmanship warranty on waterproofing specifically. It costs you nothing if you install to TCNA detail and it answers the one thing the franchise brags about.
• Do not fight over a $28,458 minor kitchen the franchise runs at volume. Fight for the $45,000 job that needs a wall opened, a window moved and someone who can draw it.
• Price against local reality, not the franchise flyer. In a market running 20 percent below the national average, their national pricing is your opening.