Kitchen Remodeling in Greenville, SC
Most kitchen remodels in Greenville start with a wall. Someone stands in a kitchen that’s boxed off from the rest of the house, points at the wall between them and the living room, and asks if it can come out. Usually it can. Sometimes it shouldn’t, and part of our job is telling you which.
We’re BuildMasters, a design-build remodeling company in Greenville, and kitchen remodeling is the bulk of what we do. This is a straight walk through how a kitchen remodel actually goes here: what to decide first, where people waste money, and when opening up the floor plan is worth it. If you’d rather just talk it through, call us at (864) 729-4141. Looking at your kitchen and telling you what we’d do is free.
The wall is usually the first conversation
Greenville’s housing does something specific to kitchens. A lot of the homes we work in went up in the 1980s and 90s, when the standard move was to wall the kitchen off from everything else. A compartment with a soffit, a cramped eat-in corner, one doorway to the living room. People are tired of cooking in a closet while everyone else is in the next room.
So the wall comes out. In Houzz’s 2025 kitchen trends study, about a third of remodels enlarged the kitchen, usually by borrowing space from the dining or living room. That lines up with almost every job we start here.
The catch is that plenty of these walls hold up the house. When one is load-bearing, taking it out means a beam carrying that load, sized and set so you don’t end up with a post planted in the middle of your new island. That’s an engineering question, not a sledgehammer question. Get it answered before anyone starts swinging.
And open-concept isn’t always the right call. If your kitchen backs up to a tall great room, opening it all the way puts cooking smells and dishwasher noise right in your living space with nowhere to go. Sometimes a wide cased opening gets you the connection without the downside.
Get the layout right before you fall for finishes
The mistake we see most is people choosing cabinet colors before they’ve settled how the kitchen works. Finishes are the fun part. They’re also the last part.
Start with how you actually cook. Where the sink wants to be, where the range goes, how far the walk to the fridge. If the layout fights you every night, fix it now, because moving a sink or a gas line is simple while the walls are open and a headache once they’re closed. It’s rarely just new doors on old boxes: Houzz found 45% of kitchen projects involve structural changes to how the room flows.
Islands are where a lot of wish-lists land, and they keep getting bigger, more than 40% now run seven feet or longer. Great when the room can carry it. In plenty of Greenville kitchens it can’t, and an oversized island just strangles the walkways around it. Function first, then size.
Cabinets are where the money goes, and where people cut
If there’s one place not to go cheap, it’s the cabinets. They’re the most expensive single part of most kitchens, they take the most skilled labor, and they’re the thing your hands touch every day. A pretty door on a flimsy box is a bad trade you’ll notice within a year.
The look right now is calmer than the all-white era. Shaker doors still lead by a wide margin, but wood is back, white oak especially, and more people will put real color on a cabinet now. The NKBA’s latest report has greens and blues climbing fast.
Style aside, what matters is how the box is built: plywood over particleboard, drawer glides that still roll in ten years, hinges that don’t sag. That’s the whole reason we keep a showroom instead of handing you a catalog. You can open the drawers and feel the difference between a cheap box and a good one. It’s at 119 Woodruff Industrial Lane in Greenville, worth the trip before you commit to anything.
On the finishes, we build an allowance for each category into the proposal, tile, fixtures, sinks, faucets, and hardware, so you can pick from our partners or bring your own. Find a tile you love elsewhere and we’ll pick it up and hold it until install. Your kitchen, your call.
What the permit office actually cares about
A kitchen remodel in Greenville usually needs a permit, and which office you deal with comes down to your address. Inside city limits, it’s the City of Greenville’s Building and Permit Center. Out in unincorporated Greenville County, it’s Greenville County Building Safety. The first thing we do is figure out which one you’re in, because the mailing address doesn’t always tell you.
You need a permit when the work is structural or touches the systems: pulling that wall, moving plumbing, new electrical, a relocated gas line. Swapping cabinets in the same footprint, new counters, flooring, or paint generally doesn’t. We pull whatever’s required and carry the inspections, so it isn’t one more thing on your plate.
Do you need a designer, or just a contractor?
The honest answer depends on how much is changing. Keeping the layout and just freshening things up? A solid contractor is plenty. Moving walls and plumbing? Now you want real design first, actual drawings, not guesswork.
That’s the argument for design-build, which is how we’re set up. The same team designs your kitchen and builds it, so the plan and the crew never fall out of sync. What it adds is that nobody hands your project off in the middle: you call one number from the first sketch to the last inspection.
A few things people ask us about kitchens
Do I need a permit for a kitchen remodel in Greenville?
If the work is structural or touches plumbing, electrical, gas, or HVAC, yes. Pulling a wall, moving the sink, adding circuits, relocating the range, all of that gets permitted. A like-for-like swap of cabinets, counters, or flooring in the same spot usually doesn’t. Inside the city it runs through the City of Greenville; in unincorporated areas it’s Greenville County. We figure out which and handle it.
Can I move the sink or the stove somewhere else?
Usually, yes. It just means plumbing or gas work, which is far easier while the kitchen is already open than after it’s closed up. The better question is whether moving it actually improves how you use the room. We’ll put a couple of layouts in front of you before locking one in.
Are open-concept kitchens still worth it?
For most homes, opening up at least partway is still worth it, especially those closed-off 80s and 90s kitchens you see all over Greenville. Full open-concept has trade-offs though: more noise, cooking smells that travel, and less wall for cabinets and storage. Sometimes a wide opening gives you the connection without the headaches. It comes down to your house.
Can I stay in my home during a kitchen remodel?
Most people do. We set up a temporary spot for a fridge, microwave, and coffee maker, and we seal off the work zone to keep the dust out of the rest of the house. It’s not glamorous for a while, but you don’t need to move out over a kitchen.
How do I choose a kitchen remodeler?
Find someone licensed and insured in South Carolina who does kitchens regularly, and ask to see real finished projects, not just a photo gallery. Get the scope in writing. And watch whether they’ll tell you no. A remodeler who talks you out of a bad idea is worth more than one who says yes to everything.
Come talk kitchens with us
If you’re planning a kitchen remodel in Greenville, come see the showroom, or just call and we’ll set up a time to look at your kitchen and talk it through. We’ll tell you what’s realistic, what we’d do, and what we’d steer you away from.
119 Woodruff Industrial Lane, Greenville, SC 29607
(864) 729-4141 | [email protected]
We’ve been remodeling kitchens around the Upstate for over a decade. The first conversation is free.