A galley kitchen renovation in Vancouver usually plans in our small band, about $18,000 to $28,000 for a condo galley with standard finishes and builder appliances. A longer galley in a house, with premium finishes and a mid appliance package, moves into the $30,000 to $50,000 range where most of our projects land. Those are planning ranges, not quotes. A galley has fewer cabinets than an open-plan kitchen, so the number starts lower, but the two walls are close together and every measurement has to be right.
A galley is two parallel runs of cabinets with an aisle between them, or one run facing a wall. Vancouver has a lot of them. Many apartments built from the 1970s through the early 2000s in Kitsilano, the West End, and along Broadway have a galley off the living room. Older houses in Mount Pleasant, Grandview, and East Vancouver often have a galley that doubles as the corridor to the back door. Laneway houses and secondary suites are almost always galleys by necessity.
Our calculator labels its small option "galley or condo" for this reason. It is the most common small kitchen in the city.
Cabinetry is the largest line in most kitchen budgets, and a galley simply has less of it. Two runs of base and wall cabinets, no island, no peninsula, and a shorter counter. Our cabinetry-only floor is $15,000, and a compact galley with standard finishes is the kind of project that sits near it.
The way to add storage without adding width is to go up. Wall cabinets that run to the ceiling, with the top row for things used a few times a year, hold far more than the standard height with a dust shelf above. A single tall cabinet at the end of a run, fitted with pull-out shelves, does the work of a pantry in the width of one cabinet.
The aisle is the whole design problem in a galley. It needs to stay wide enough for two people to pass and for a dishwasher door and an oven door to open without meeting in the middle. That leaves no room for cabinets to be even slightly oversized. In an older building the walls are rarely parallel, and the floor may drop a centimetre or two along the run.
This is why made-to-order cabinets suit a galley so well. We measure the space after the design is agreed, build each box to the real dimensions, and fit the run to the walls as they are, not as the plans say. Cabinets arrive pre-assembled, and the fit is planned before the shop cuts anything.
In a galley, appliances take a larger share of the total than they do in a big kitchen. You still need a fridge, a range or a cooktop and oven, a dishwasher, and a hood, regardless of how few cabinets surround them, so the appliance package matters more here than anywhere. Counters are shorter, so quartz costs less than it would on a large kitchen with an island. Trades are the variable. If the sink, the range, and the fridge stay where they are, the plumbing and electrical work is small. If you move the sink from one wall to the other, your contractor's plumber and electrician have real work to do under the floor and in the walls, and that is a separate line from the cabinetry.
We design, build, and install the cabinetry and coordinate the project. Demolition, plumbing, electrical, and countertops are done by trades and are separate lines from the cabinetry.
Four things move the number. Size is first: a condo galley of two short runs sits in the small band, and a long galley in a house with tall cabinets on both sides is a medium kitchen. Finish tier is second: painted slab MDF is the standard choice, and rift white oak or walnut veneer fronts step the finish up. Interior organization is third: drawer stacks, pull-outs, and a corner system add hardware and shop time, and they are worth it in a tight kitchen. The appliance package is fourth, and in a galley it moves the total more than most people expect.
Condo galleys come with strata rules. Work hours are limited, the elevator has to be booked for deliveries, and noisy work is restricted to certain days. Pre-assembled cabinets help here because the install is short. Our standard lead time from confirmed design to cabinets ready is about 4 weeks, which lets you line up the trades and the strata paperwork in the same window.
For a planning range on your own galley, use the Vancouver Kitchen Cost Calculator and pick the small or medium size. Our guide to how much a custom kitchen costs in Vancouver explains the bands in full, and where your kitchen budget actually goes breaks down the lines. When you are ready, book a free consultation and bring a photo and a rough measurement of the two walls. We can tell you a lot from that.