Kitchen Renovation in North Vancouver

A kitchen renovation covers cabinetry, countertops, appliances, flooring, lighting, and the plumbing and electrical work that ties it all together. The single biggest decision is layout: keep your sink, stove, and fridge roughly where they are and most of your budget goes to finishes you can see. Move them, or take down a wall to open the kitchen to the living space, and you're into structural and mechanical work - often worth doing, but only as a decision you make with the cost in front of you.

We run kitchens as a full general contractor, not a cabinet installer. You get a detailed fixed-price proposal that spells out exactly what's included and what isn't, a locked start date, and one point of contact from demolition to walkthrough. The owners are on site regularly - catching issues before they become problems is cheaper than fixing them after - and we handle the permits, the trade scheduling, and the strata paperwork if you're in a multi-unit building.

Most of our kitchen clients in North Vancouver fall into two groups: homeowners planning their first major renovation, and people who were burned by a previous contractor and want the next one priced honestly. Both get the same process - a real walkthrough, a complete number, and no pressure.

A kitchen that moves services can sit on three or four permit tracks at once, each with its own issuer. Building and plumbing permits come from your municipality's building department. Electrical is the one that surprises people: as of mid-2026, some Lower Mainland municipalities issue and inspect their own electrical permits under authority delegated by Technical Safety BC, while in the rest, Technical Safety BC handles it directly. Gas work - moving a range connection, extending a line - carries its own permit and is licensed-contractor territory in most renovation scenarios. The code is the same everywhere; what changes is who holds the paperwork.

Homeowner permits are narrower than most people assume. BC lets an owner pull their own electrical or gas permit only for a detached home they own and live in - not a strata unit, not a duplex, not a home with a rental suite or business - and the work still has to pass the same inspections. For most kitchens the practical route is licensed trades, because the name on the permit is the name responsible for the work.

If your new layout removes or opens a wall that might be carrying load, the permit application needs drawings stamped by a professional engineer - showing the existing condition, the beam that replaces the wall with its size and material, the bearing points and connections, and how the structure is supported while the swap happens. Your municipality reviews that design before issuing the permit, and the building inspector later checks the installed beam against those drawings before anything is closed in.

The sequence matters more than the paperwork: engineer first, then permit, then demolition. It adds time to the front of the project rather than the middle - which is exactly where you want it. A wall opened without that trail becomes a problem at resale, at insurance time, or at the inspection you eventually cannot avoid.

Every range hood has to duct to the outdoors through non-combustible, corrosion-resistant duct with a grease filter at the intake - never into an attic or a joist bay. The lesser-known rule arrives when you upgrade to a powerful pro-style hood: BC's residential ventilation requirements pair high-capacity exhaust with make-up air, meaning a supply fan that brings in roughly as much outdoor air as the hood throws out, wired to run whenever the hood runs, and tempered so you are not pouring winter air into your kitchen.

That one appliance choice can quietly add duct routing, an electrical circuit, and a small heater to the scope. None of this is a reason to give up the hood you want - it is a reason to choose appliances early, so the mechanical work is designed in from the start instead of discovered at rough-in.

Permitted work in North Vancouver is inspected in stages: rough-in first, while framing, wiring, pipe, and venting are still visible, then final at the end. The rough-in visit is the only time anyone can verify what ends up behind your drywall, and the rules give that moment teeth - work concealed before a building official accepts it can be ordered uncovered at the owner's expense.

The application itself is lighter than people fear for interior work: scaled floor plans of the kitchen as it is and as it will be, a description of the work, and stamped structural drawings only where structure changes. In homes built before 1990, one step comes before any of it - a hazardous-materials survey by a qualified person ahead of demolition, a WorkSafeBC requirement, because drywall compound and flooring adhesives from that era commonly contain asbestos.

A cosmetic kitchen update - new cabinets and counters in the same layout - usually doesn't need a building permit. Moving plumbing or gas, adding circuits, or removing a wall generally does, and electrical work in BC is permitted separately through Technical Safety BC by a licensed contractor. If your kitchen is in a condo or townhouse in North Vancouver, your strata's alteration approval sits on top of the municipal permit. We identify what your scope triggers, pull the permits, and schedule the inspections so nothing gets closed in before it's signed off.

Permits come from either the City of North Vancouver or the District of North Vancouver depending on your address — two separate authorities with separate applications, and it's easy to look up the wrong one. District properties near creeks or on steeper ground can trigger environmental or geotechnical review before a building permit is issued, which is worth knowing before you set a start date. We confirm the jurisdiction, assemble the right package for it, and sequence the approvals so review time overlaps with design and ordering rather than delaying them.

Once you know whether your address falls under the City of North Vancouver or the District of North Vancouver, the next question is how each office actually works. Both now take building permit applications electronically only; the City moved to digital-only submissions back in 2021, and as of mid-2026 it is also one of the early municipalities accepting certain applications through the Province's new Building Permit Hub. The District runs its own online system, and its public permit records reach back to 1992, which lets you check what was ever legally done to a house before you buy or budget around it.

The review path itself is conventional in both jurisdictions: plan review, then staged inspections, with structural work requiring engineer-sealed drawings. What is distinct here is what gets added on top. District properties near creeks or on steeper ground can need environmental or geotechnical studies before a permit is issued, and homes built before 1990 need a hazardous-materials survey lined up for any demolition-stage work. The practical move is to identify every added study during design, so review time runs in parallel with planning instead of after it.