The order of a kitchen remodel is not really about the crew. It is about which decisions have to be final before the next thing can physically happen. Layout comes first, because it determines the plumbing and the electrical. Appliance sizes come next, because cabinet openings are built to them. Cabinet selection follows, because that order starts a clock nobody can speed up. Almost every schedule problem in a kitchen traces back to one of those three still being unsettled when it needed to be settled.
This is the part homeowners are most surprised by. It feels like the project starts on demolition day, but by then the important choices are already locked and the rest is execution. If you are still deciding on a range or a door style while the crew is tearing out the old kitchen, you are not ahead of schedule. You are about to stall in the middle of the project, in a house that no longer has a working kitchen.
Demolition is fast and it feels like progress, which is exactly what makes it risky. Cabinets, counters, flooring and fixtures come out in a fraction of the time it took to plan them, and suddenly the room is studs, wire and dust. This is also the moment the project is at its most flexible, because very little is committed yet, and that flexibility is the thing to be careful with.
Older homes across the Wasatch Front tend to have opinions. Wiring that was fine for a kitchen built decades ago and is not fine for a modern one, plumbing that was patched rather than replaced, framing a previous owner modified without telling anyone. None of this is unusual. What matters is that scope creep during demolition is the most common source of budget overrun, and every addition sounds reasonable at the moment someone suggests it. Agree ahead of time who approves changes and how they get priced.
With the room stripped, the trades work in a specific order. Plumbing supply and drain lines get moved or extended, gas gets run if the range is changing position, and the electrician sets circuits, receptacles, switch boxes and lighting locations. Any hood ducting gets routed to where it will terminate. This is the only convenient time for all of it, which is precisely why the layout decisions had to be final before demolition rather than during it.
Where permits apply, and they generally do when electrical, plumbing or structure change, inspections happen at this stage and nothing gets covered until they pass. It can feel like dead time because the room looks no different at the end of it. It is not dead time. Rough-in is the part of the project you will rely on for as long as you own the house and never see again once the drywall goes back up.
Drywall goes back, gets taped, finished and primed, and the room starts looking like a room again. Painting walls and ceilings before cabinets arrive is common, because it is far easier without boxes in the way, with a final coat saved for the end. Small details get decided here that are awkward to revisit later, like blocking for heavy shelving, the exact height of a switch, or where an under-cabinet light gets its power.
Flooring is the fork in the road. Running the floor underneath the cabinets means more material and a continuous floor if you ever change the layout again. Stopping it at the cabinet run means less material and a harder time down the road. Neither choice is wrong, but it has to be made before cabinets arrive, because the answer determines who is standing in the room next and in what order.
Cabinet delivery is the moment the project turns. Boxes get checked against the order, then set level and scribed to walls that were framed by people who were not thinking about your kitchen. Fillers, panels, trim and toe kick follow. This stage rewards patience: a cabinet run that is slightly off will show up in every countertop seam and every door reveal for the rest of the time you live there.
It is also the moment homeowners feel most optimistic and are most wrong about how close they are. With cabinets in and no counters, the kitchen is arguably at its least usable point. The room looks nearly done and cannot do a single useful thing. Most appliances cannot be set, there is no sink, there is no water, and there is nowhere to put anything down while you figure out dinner.
Countertops get templated on the installed cabinets and then fabricated off site, which creates the unavoidable gap in the middle of the project. When the tops come back they are set and seamed, and the plumber reconnects the sink, faucet and disposal. Only then does the kitchen have running water again, which is usually the milestone people actually care about, far more than the one where cabinets went in.
Backsplash goes on after the counters, since it sits on them. Appliances get placed and connected, hardware goes on, the final coat of paint gets touched in, and the punch list begins: the drawer that catches, the filler that needs scribing, the outlet cover nobody installed. It is the least dramatic part of the project and the part that decides whether the kitchen feels finished or permanently almost finished.
Some can. Selections, ordering and permit applications all run in parallel with each other, and trades often share days during rough-in. What cannot overlap is the spine of it: rough-in waits on demolition, cabinets wait on delivery, the countertop template waits on installed cabinets, and the backsplash waits on counters. That chain is physical rather than procedural, and no amount of scheduling pressure moves it.
It depends how far the order has gone and how different the new appliance is. Cabinet openings are built to specific dimensions, so a wider range or a taller refrigerator can mean modifying or reordering cabinetry, which restarts the lead time you were already waiting through. Settle on actual appliance models, not just categories, before the cabinet order is placed.
Most wall and ceiling painting is easier before cabinets arrive, with a final pass at the end once trim, filler and touch-up areas exist. If you are having existing cabinets painted rather than replaced, that is its own preparation-heavy stage and it does not belong in the middle of dusty work. Sequence it with your contractor rather than assuming where it lands.
Share the basics and we will take it from there, or call 801-644-9000 if you would rather talk it through.