Kitchen Remodeling in Provincetown, MA

East End, West End, Commercial Street condos — small kitchens made to work, with the historic district handled properly.

Provincetown is unlike anywhere else we work, and a kitchen remodel here is unlike anywhere else too. The lots are small, many of the buildings are eighteenth and nineteenth century, a great deal of the housing has been converted to condominium, Commercial Street is narrow and one-way, and nearly everything is inside the historic district. None of that makes a good kitchen impossible. It makes planning matter far more than it does in a town with a driveway and a garage.

On Cape Kitchens works in Provincetown regularly from our base in North Eastham, roughly forty minutes down Route 6. Owner and designer Vern Hatt is a Massachusetts licensed and insured contractor (Construction Supervisor License #CS62739, Home Improvement Contractor License #177590), and his background in design and permitting is the reason Provincetown projects go smoothly — the review requirements get addressed at the design stage, before a schedule has been promised to anyone.

Most of what we do here falls into three categories: antique half-Capes and full Capes in the East and West Ends, condominium units carved out of larger historic buildings, and year-round homes further from the centre where the constraints ease. Each has its own approach.

This is the single most important thing for a Provincetown homeowner to understand before starting. Under Chapter 15 of the town's general bylaws, no building permit for construction or for alteration of an exterior architectural feature within the historic district can be issued until the Historic District Commission has issued a certificate. That is a hard sequence, not a suggestion.

The good news for kitchen projects: the commission reviews exterior features visible from a public way. Your cabinets, countertops, appliances, flooring, tile and interior layout are outside its jurisdiction entirely. You can gut the inside of the room without a hearing.

The trap is ventilation. A properly ducted range hood has to terminate somewhere, and if that somewhere is a wall or roof plane visible from the street, it is an exterior alteration and it goes to the HDC. Same for a new window over the sink, a changed door, or a skylight. We resolve this at design: either route the duct to a face that is not visible from a public way, use a recirculating hood with good filtration where ducting is genuinely impractical, or file for the certificate and build the review calendar into the schedule from day one. What we do not do is discover it after demolition.

The practical side of a Provincetown remodel deserves as much planning as the design. Commercial Street is narrow and one-way, parking is limited, and delivery access in season ranges from difficult to impossible. Many units are on upper floors of buildings with narrow stairs and tight turns — which means cabinet sizing has to account for what will physically get up the stairwell, and a large one-piece countertop may need to be reconsidered as seamed sections.

We measure access before we order, not after. Where a unit is in a condominium, we handle the association requirements — certificates of insurance, approved work hours, common-area protection — as part of the job. And we schedule Provincetown work for the off-season wherever possible, because the difference between a November delivery and a July one on Commercial Street is measured in hours per trip.

Consultations are free, whether at your Provincetown home or at our showroom at Unit #7, 4250 State Highway in North Eastham, next to Ace Hardware. Bring photos and measurements if you have them; if you do not, we will take them.

Or send us an email to schedule  ·  Monday–Friday 8:00 AM–5:00 PM, Saturday by appointment