Kitchen Remodeling in Santa Monica

Every project opens with a free on-site estimate. I walk the kitchen with you, open the panel, look at what the plumbing and gas lines actually do, and check what the building will let us move. Santa Monica kitchens are rarely a blank slate. Knowing where the stack runs before we draw anything is what keeps the scope honest.

You get a written scope before demolition starts. Fixtures, finishes, appliance specifications, and the payment schedule are named line by line and approved before we order material. Stages tie to milestones you can see: permit issued, rough-in inspected, cabinets set, final inspection cleared. That structure is why our clients rarely face a surprise revision mid-project.

One lead runs your site. Floors get protected, dust walls go up, and we set up a temporary kitchen so you can live at home while we work. We schedule the inspections. We meet the inspector. You do not chase the City.

Santa Monica is not LADBS territory and it is not unincorporated County. The City runs its own Building and Safety Division out of the Permit Services Center at 1685 Main Street. The permit process is fully paperless. Applications and drawings upload to the City's Electronic Plan Review System before anyone sets foot at the public counter.

The City sorts work two ways. Same-Day Review covers minor projects that staff can review and approve at the counter. Plan Review covers everything else, including anything above the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing review thresholds. A kitchen that gains circuits or relocates a sink touches several trades at once; where the scope stays minor, the City's Combination Building Permit is built for exactly that. Once a wall comes out or the scope crosses the review thresholds, the file goes in as an Electronic Plan Review Application instead. Genuinely single-trade work can ride a Single-Trade Building Permit instead.

I do not promise permit dates. Review runs on the City's clock. What I promise is a complete, buildable submittal the first time, so the file is not bouncing back for missing sheets.

Much of mid-city Santa Monica is stacked residential stock built between the 1950s and the 1970s. Those kitchens share drain stacks, vent risers, and sometimes structural walls with the units above and below. A layout that looks simple on paper can mean opening a chase that serves four other homes.

We plan for that. HOA or board approval comes before the City submittal, not after. Work hours, elevator protection, parking for material drops, and shutoff notice to neighbors are set in writing at the start.

The City's Seismic Retrofit Program matters here too. It has been mandatory since 2017, and the City identified more than 2,000 commercial and multi-family residential buildings as potentially seismically vulnerable across five building categories. If your building carries a retrofit order, the kitchen work should be sequenced around the structural work rather than buried under it. We check that status before we scope.

We are licensed, we are insured, and we hold a 5.0 star average across 88 client reviews (as of August 2026). We build to the finish level the home deserves and scale the investment to scope and materials, never to a number pulled out of the air. Class B general building plus the C-33 classification means the finish trades stay in house instead of getting handed off at the end.

Book a free on-site estimate. I will walk your kitchen, tell you what the building and the City will allow, and put the scope in writing. Call (949) 558-9738.