The single most useful thing you can do for your own sanity is to move the kitchen somewhere else before anyone shows up with a pry bar. Not the morning of. Before. Once demolition starts you are improvising in a house full of dust and noise, and improvised setups are almost always worse than the ones you planned while you still had counters to work on.
Pick a room that is not in the work path and can lose its normal function for the duration. A dining room, a basement family room, a garage in mild weather. You need a work surface, a place for the refrigerator to plug into a circuit that will stay live, and access to a sink somewhere in the house. Then move the things you use every day and box the rest, because you are packing the kitchen either way.
The short list is smaller than people expect. A refrigerator, a microwave, a kettle or coffee maker, a toaster oven or hot plate, and one bin for dirty dishes. Paper plates get old fast, but they get you through the worst of it. What you truly miss is not the range. It is the sink, and the sink is the one thing you cannot recreate anywhere else in the house.
Skip anything you would have to unpack twice. Set aside a couple of pans, a cutting board, a knife, and enough dishes for the household, then box everything else and label it by where it will go in the new kitchen. A folding table gives you a work surface and somewhere to stack things. Plan for trash and recycling too, because takeout containers accumulate faster than anyone believes they will.
Demolition and drywall work put dust into parts of the house nowhere near the kitchen. Plastic barriers and floor protection help, and a serious contractor will use them, but expect fine dust to find its way around anyway. Close doors, cover what you care about, and take things off the walls on shared surfaces. Anyone in the house with a sensitivity should know which days demolition and sanding are happening.
The rhythm of the house changes too. Crews start early, the house is not private during work hours, and someone needs to be reachable for decisions. Pets are the piece people forget: doors get propped open, tools and materials sit at floor level, and a cat that has never been outside will absolutely make the attempt. Decide where animals stay on active work days rather than sorting it out at seven in the morning.
Every kitchen project has a low point, and it is not demolition. It is the stretch after cabinets are installed and before countertops arrive. The room looks close to finished, the boxes are hung, the space is swept, and it can do nothing at all. There is no water, no surface to set anything on, and most appliances cannot be placed until the tops are down and connected.
Knowing it is coming helps more than you would think. The gap exists because countertops are templated on installed cabinets and then fabricated off site, so it is structural to how kitchens get built, not a sign that anything went wrong or that anyone is dragging. Plan something for that stretch. Meals out, a visit, a stocked freezer somewhere else in the house. It is a normal part of the process and it does pass.
The remodel will ask you questions on its schedule, not on yours. A fixture arrives wrong, something behind a wall is not what anyone expected, a tile pattern needs a call today. Decide in advance who in the household is the decision maker and how the contractor should reach that person. Two people answering the same question differently is how a project starts developing opinions of its own.
Agree on how changes get handled before there are any. What gets written down, who signs off, how additions are priced, and what happens to the schedule. Demolition is when the temptation to add things is highest and the justification is easiest, which is precisely why the rule should already exist. A short conversation early prevents most of the arguments that otherwise happen later.
Most households do not. The kitchen is unusable for a meaningful stretch, but the rest of the house keeps working. Moving out makes more sense when the project includes structural work, when someone in the house has a real sensitivity to dust, or when the household simply cannot absorb the disruption. It is a comfort decision more than a necessity.
Somewhere out of the work path, on an outlet that will not be shut off during electrical work. A garage works in mild weather but is worth thinking through in a Utah summer or a cold snap, since many refrigerators do not run well in extreme temperatures. Ask the electrician which circuits are staying live before you plug anything in and walk away.
Barriers at the openings, floor protection along the path the crew walks, and covering or closing off any HVAC returns in the work area. Ask how the crew handles containment and daily cleanup rather than assuming it is included. Then set your expectations honestly: containment reduces dust a great deal, and it does not eliminate it entirely.
Share the basics and we will take it from there, or call 801-644-9000 if you would rather talk it through.