One of the biggest differences between updating a kitchen and completely remodeling one is whether we open the walls.
Sometimes everything looks pretty good. Sometimes we find old wiring, patched plumbing, questionable framing, abandoned pipes, water damage, or evidence of three previous remodels stacked on top of each other. And sometimes we find something that actually needs to change the plan.
Opening the walls doesn’t mean we’re looking for reasons to spend more money.
It means that if we’re already rebuilding the kitchen, this is probably the best opportunity we’re ever going to have to deal with the things hidden behind it.
In older houses, the short answer is a little bit of everything. Some of the more common things we run into:
That doesn’t mean your kitchen has all of these problems. And old doesn’t automatically mean bad.
The point is to evaluate what’s there, instead of assuming everything behind a finished wall is either perfect or a disaster.
Kitchens have changed dramatically in terms of electrical demand. Think about everything plugged into a modern one — refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, coffee maker, toaster, air fryer, disposal, range, lighting, whatever is charging on the counter.
Now compare that with a kitchen wired decades ago.
Even if somebody updated the receptacles at some point, that doesn’t necessarily tell us what wiring is behind them. In genuinely old houses we can still encounter knob-and-tube wiring. In houses from later periods we may encounter other generations of wiring and previous alterations.
Sometimes everything is serviceable. Sometimes the kitchen has been modified several times and the wiring tells the story.
If the walls are already open and the electrical needs work, I’d much rather deal with it now than bury it behind brand-new cabinets.
This is worth understanding if you’re buying or remodeling an older house.
You can walk into the basement and see a modern breaker panel. Great. That doesn’t necessarily mean all of the wiring leaving that panel was replaced when the panel was installed.
Houses get updated in pieces. A kitchen gets remodeled. An addition gets built. A bathroom gets renovated. A service gets upgraded. Twenty years later, the electrical system may contain work from several different periods.
That’s not automatically a problem. But you can’t determine the condition of an entire electrical system by looking at the panel cover.
Once the kitchen is open, we have a much better opportunity to see what we’re actually working with.
Older houses rarely have one neat generation of plumbing.
You might have newer PEX water lines connected to older copper. Copper connected to galvanized piping somewhere else. PVC drains tied into older drain systems. Evidence of plumbing that was abandoned when a fixture moved decades ago.
Again, mixed materials don’t automatically mean something is wrong. Homes evolve. The question is whether the existing system is in good condition and appropriate for what we’re asking it to do.
If we’re relocating the sink, adding fixtures or changing the layout, we’re already working on the plumbing. That’s the time to understand what’s upstream and downstream from the part we’re replacing.
Our article on how plumbing has changed in older homes goes deeper into the different materials you’re likely to find.
Drainage isn’t just about getting a pipe from the sink to the sewer. The plumbing system also has to be properly vented.
That’s one reason moving a sink isn’t as simple as running a new drain through the floor.
Those questions become especially important when somebody wants to move a sink into an island.
The cabinet drawing might say the sink can go anywhere. The house underneath the cabinet drawing gets a vote too.
That’s why we covered sink relocation in Should you keep your kitchen layout or change it?
An old house doesn’t bother me just because it’s old. What interests me is what happened to it between the day it was built and today.
Maybe the kitchen was remodeled in 1978. Then somebody updated it again in 1996. Then a homeowner opened part of a wall in 2008. Then somebody installed new cabinets without opening anything in 2019. Now we’re standing there trying to understand all of it.
Every generation may have left something behind. Old framing. Blocked doorways. Unused plumbing. Splices. Patches. Different insulation. Layers of wall material.
Sometimes the original construction is the least confusing part of the house. It’s the renovations in between that make things interesting.
This can range from completely harmless to something that needs attention.
Holes get drilled through framing for pipes and wires. Notches get cut. Walls get moved. Joists get modified. Openings get enlarged. Most houses have some version of this somewhere.
The question is whether it was done appropriately. If we open the kitchen and discover a structural member was significantly altered during an earlier renovation, we need to understand what it’s carrying before covering it back up.
This becomes especially important when the current remodel also involves removing walls. We’re not just looking at whether our new work is structurally sound — we need to understand what we’re connecting it to.
That’s part of why structural kitchen projects cost more than simply replacing cabinets and countertops.
Kitchens have plenty of opportunities for water to get where it shouldn’t. Sink leaks. Dishwasher leaks. Refrigerator water lines. Old plumbing connections. Exterior walls and windows.
Sometimes a leak is obvious immediately. Sometimes it’s been slow enough that the homeowner never saw water on the floor.
Cabinets can hide quite a bit. Once they’re removed, we may find staining, damaged subfloor or deteriorated framing.
That doesn’t automatically mean the kitchen has a catastrophic problem. A small area of damaged material may be straightforward to repair.
But putting a new cabinet over rotten material because it wasn’t in the original scope isn’t an acceptable solution either.
If something needs fixed, we deal with it.
If we’re opening an exterior wall, we can see what’s actually insulating it. In an older house, that might not be what you expect.
There may be older insulation. There may be newer insulation added during a previous renovation. There may be areas that aren’t insulated particularly well.
This doesn’t mean a kitchen remodel should automatically become a whole-house energy retrofit. It means that when something is exposed, we have an opportunity to make sensible improvements before we close it again.
That’s a very different proposition from tearing apart finished areas of the house solely to inspect them.
A lot of older Central PA houses weren’t built with drywall. They were built with plaster — depending on the age and construction, that can mean plaster over wood lath or other older systems.
Plaster behaves differently during demolition and repair than modern drywall. You don’t necessarily make a neat little cut, do your work and screw the piece back into place. Once older plaster starts breaking away from its base, repairs become more involved.
We’ve got a separate article on horsehair plaster and what homeowners should know before remodeling an older house. If your kitchen has plaster walls, it’s worth understanding before demolition starts.
First, we figure out what it actually is. Not every ugly-looking thing inside an old wall is an emergency, and something being old isn’t enough reason for me to tell you it needs replaced.
We want to know:
Then we decide what makes sense. Maybe nothing needs to happen. Maybe there’s a small repair. Maybe we need to bring in the appropriate trade. Occasionally we find something significant enough that it changes the project.
But that should be based on the condition we found. Not on an excuse to turn every opened wall into additional work.
This is where remodeling gets more nuanced than people sometimes realize.
Doing work in one part of an older house does not automatically mean you’re rebuilding the entire house to current new-construction standards. At the same time, new and altered work has to comply with the requirements that apply to the project, and existing conditions can sometimes affect what needs to be corrected as part of that work.
Pennsylvania uses the Uniform Construction Code, and enforcement is generally handled by the municipality or its third-party code agency. That’s why permit and inspection requirements can differ depending on both what we’re doing and where the house is located.
We go through that in more detail in what it takes to remove a wall, and we’ve written separately on what work requires a permit in Central PA and how to know whether your contractor is building to code .
It’s one reason.
When we’re estimating an existing house, there are things we can inspect. And then there are things physically concealed inside finished walls and floors. Nobody can honestly tell you with absolute certainty what’s inside every wall before demolition.
That doesn’t mean the estimate should be meaningless. A contractor who works on existing houses should know enough to anticipate normal remodeling conditions. But there’s a difference between normal uncertainty and discovering something nobody could reasonably see before the project started.
That’s where a construction contingency makes sense.
A contingency shouldn’t become a contractor’s permission slip to estimate badly.
Same idea. If you decide halfway through construction that you want to add something, that’s a change. If we discover a concealed condition that genuinely requires additional work, that can also affect the scope.
But “we forgot to include it” isn’t the same thing as “we couldn’t see it until the wall came apart.” Those distinctions matter.
They’re also why the original scope of work needs to be clear. If nobody knows what was included in the first place, every conversation after demolition becomes harder.
Our guide to change orders during a remodel explains how we think those should work.
No.
I wouldn’t gut a perfectly good kitchen just because I’m curious what’s behind the drywall. But if we’re already doing a full kitchen remodel, opening the walls can be a good thing.
We can inspect the framing. See the electrical. See the plumbing. Make the changes the new layout requires. Correct legitimate problems. Plan outlets and lighting properly. Then photograph the concealed work before everything gets covered again.
You get one really good opportunity to see inside that part of the house. I’d rather use it.
When we price a medium kitchen refresh, we’re generally around $20,000 to $35,000, because much of the existing kitchen remains intact. A full kitchen remodel generally starts around $50,000 to $75,000.
That’s not just because we’re buying more expensive stuff. We’re doing substantially more construction — demolition, electrical, plumbing, drywall, flooring, cabinet installation, lighting, countertops, backsplash, painting — and we’re dealing with the existing house underneath all of it.
If we’re also changing walls and substantially reworking the floor plan, our medium kitchen projects generally move into the $75,000 to $115,000+ range before significant finish upgrades.
For the full breakdown, read How much does a kitchen remodel cost in Central PA?
A finished kitchen gets judged by what you can see, and obviously that matters. Cabinet doors should line up. Tile should look good. Countertops should fit properly. Paint should be clean.
But the kitchen also has to work when nobody is taking pictures of it. The dishwasher needs power. The sink needs to drain. The structure needs to carry the house. The walls need to stay dry. The outlets need to be where you need them.
A good remodel isn’t just new stuff covering the old house. It’s understanding what we’re connecting that new kitchen to.
For homeowners around Selinsgrove, Lewisburg, Sunbury, Northumberland, Danville, Shamokin Dam, Milton, Watsontown and the surrounding Susquehanna Valley, that’s a big part of how we approach remodeling older homes.
But don’t ignore the house underneath it. If yours is an older home, horsehair plaster, knob-and-tube wiring and older plumbing are the three we run into most.
What do contractors commonly find behind kitchen walls?
Older kitchens can reveal previous electrical and plumbing work, abandoned utilities, modified framing, old water damage, insulation issues and layers from previous renovations. Not every old condition is a problem; the important part is determining what actually needs attention before the walls are closed again.
Should electrical wiring be replaced during a kitchen remodel?
Not automatically. Existing wiring should be evaluated based on its type, condition and the work being performed. If wiring serving the kitchen needs to be changed or upgraded, a full gut remodel provides much better access than trying to address it after new cabinets and finishes are installed.
Should old plumbing be replaced while the kitchen walls are open?
It depends on the material, condition and planned kitchen layout. Old doesn’t automatically mean bad, but deteriorated or inadequate plumbing is much easier to address while the walls and cabinets are already removed.
What happens if a contractor finds hidden damage during a kitchen remodel?
The condition should first be documented and evaluated to determine whether it actually requires repair. If additional work is necessary and wasn’t reasonably visible before demolition, the contractor should explain the problem, the proposed solution and any cost change before proceeding.
Should I have a contingency budget for a kitchen remodel?
For a substantial renovation of an older home, having some money available for concealed conditions is sensible. A contingency doesn’t mean you should expect the project to go over budget; it provides a plan for legitimate conditions that couldn’t reasonably be inspected before demolition.
Is a full gut kitchen remodel worth it in an older house?
It can be, when the existing kitchen needs significant layout, electrical, plumbing or structural work. A gut remodel provides access to the systems behind the finished surfaces, but there’s no reason to demolish a sound kitchen simply because opening everything is theoretically “better.”
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.