Ask a contractor when the summer renovation season starts and they will not say June. The jobs that break ground in June were drawn in March, permitted in April, and had their cabinets ordered before the snow was gone. The jobs that start with a phone call in July are the ones squeezed into August at rush prices, or pushed to fall.
If you are thinking about a home renovation this summer, April is not early. April is on time. Here is the order things actually happen in, with the lead times nobody puts in the brochure.
Step 1: Design and decisions (2 to 6 weeks)
Before anything can be priced or permitted, somebody has to decide what is actually being built. Layout, materials, fixtures, finishes. This sounds simple and is where most projects lose their first month, because decisions depend on each other: the tile choice waits on the tub choice, the tub choice waits on whether the wall moves, and whether the wall moves waits on what is inside it.
You do not need every doorknob picked in April. You need the decisions that other decisions hang from: layout, the big fixtures, the cabinet order, the flooring. The rest can be settled while the permit is in review — but only if the structure of the job is locked.
Step 2: The written estimate (1 to 2 weeks)
With a design, the job gets priced properly: a written estimate, in detail, that you can hold us to the shape of. This is also where the honest conversations happen — what the budget buys, what it does not, and where the surprises are likely to live (older homes always have one or two). A price scribbled after a ten-minute walk-through in April becomes an argument in July. Paper first.
Step 3: Permits (2 to 8 weeks, and not in your control)
If the job moves walls, adds space, changes structure, or touches plumbing and electrical in a meaningful way, it needs a permit — and the municipality's clock is the one clock nobody can hustle. A straightforward residential permit in Simcoe County might come back in two or three weeks in a quiet stretch. In spring, when every contractor in the county submits at once, it can take twice that.
What sends applications back is almost always the drawings: incomplete framing details, no footing details on a deck or addition, a site plan that does not show setbacks. A clean, complete application is the single best way to shorten this step, and it is why the drawing stage deserves real time instead of a sketch on a napkin.
Step 4: Ordering (4 to 12 weeks for the things that matter)
This is the step homeowners consistently underestimate. Cabinets run six to ten weeks from order to door. Custom shower glass, four to six. Windows, eight to twelve in a busy year. Tile, fixtures, and flooring are usually faster — unless the exact one you picked is the one on backorder.
A good build does not start demolition until the long-lead items are confirmed in motion, ideally in hand. Tearing out a kitchen and then discovering the cabinets are nine weeks out is how a three-week reno becomes a summer of microwave dinners.
Step 5: The build (and its inspections)
Only now does the noisy part start — and compared to everything above, it is usually the most predictable stretch of the whole project, because the surprises were designed, priced, and permitted out of it in advance. Inspections slot into the sequence at framing, rough-in, and finish; the schedule flexes around them by days, not weeks.
Backwards from your finish date
Want to be cooking in a new kitchen by the end of July? Count back: build in July, cabinets ordered by early May, permit submitted in April, design decisions made now. That is not a sales pitch about urgency — it is the arithmetic of the season, and it runs the same way for every contractor in the county. The homeowners who get the summer they planned are the ones who started the paper in spring.
The first step costs nothing: a free estimate, in writing, with the sequence for your specific job laid out honestly — including if the honest answer is that your date means starting smaller or phasing the work. Book it at calendly.com/conceptsinc/construction-estimate-service or call (705) 330-2911.
