No answers as to why, but I had the exact same thoughts!
I came home from work and the kitchen was gone and a small hole of a room was in its place. How are all of those boxes from the garage going to fit inside that little room? I am regretting not talking down 1/2 of the wall between the dining room and kitchen. I am second guessing everything. So, yeah, probably normal!

My kitchen looks tiny with everything gone too. I already said yes to every possible measure to increase the space, so I just have to live with what is.

It's interesting isn't it? I think it comes from all the different colors and marks on the wall.

I think a room looks largest with unpainted, but finished drywall - right before it gets painted. Dunno why.

We witnessed the same phenomenon when we gutted our bathroom. I came home and though, how in the world did we ever fit a bathtub, vanity AND toilet in here? For some reason when gutted down to the studs it looks like a small little box, and looks so much bigger once the walls are up.

Now might be the time to do a "mock up" of your plan on the floor (do an outline of everything with tape or some such) so that you can see what it will really look like.

Me, too! I came home from work and found that my former kitchen had shrunk. What a shockeroo toopen the door and find that the kitchen I had known and hated for almost 30 years was now outside in the dumpster.

Equally odd is that my new kitchen looks enormous even though the space is the same. Optical illusions, I guess.

Oh, good, I feel better! The cabinets were delivered this afternoon and DH's comment was exactly that - how are they going to fit all that in there?

I am very upset though because the asymmetrical corner super susan cabinet is not a super susan but an easy reach - no rotating shelves! If I have to wait 2+ weeks for a new cab, I'll be so disappointed! And DH will not be happy...he seems a little lost and unsettled by the commotion...!!!

I guess I'm in the minority...when our kitchen was gutted my thought was "wow! it's so big!"

It was like that for 3 months so when they finally put the cabinets in, it felt claustrophobic! I'm getting over that now...

cambro5 - Totally normal to be second guessing yourself from last week (or whenever you scheduled the demo crew) until the day it's "done".

bmorepanic - You're absolutely right. Drywall went up, I freaked out about how small it became (granted I closed up a wall to another room that was open). They taped the drywall, I felt better. They mudded and sanded, felt better still. Over the weekend I primed everything and it all felt small and blah again. During the mudding phase I thought I was just getting used to it, but I think you're right about unpainted drywall.

The wheel will turn again, Cambro. When we built our house, very peculiarly just the opposite happened to me. The previously empty, and not particularly large, space actually seemed distinctly bigger when the first line of cabinets was brought in and bolted to the wall. It should have been the other way around, but I had to assume it was some sort of mental space-gauging thing--with the cabinets in I finally interpreted the space as the biggest kitchen I'd ever had instead of...a too-small garage?

Sooo....what are your deminsions?

I had the same feeling as the OP, so I laid everything out with blue tape on the floor and "lived with it" during the elec & plumbing work. Today the sheet rock went up & BOY, the space looks huge again! Don't worry, it'll be great!

Mine looked so small after they gutted it too. Continued to look small after they drywalled it. Even after it was painted. Now the cabs are in and it looks smaller still. Don't understand how the kitchen looked bigger before the demo and smaller afterwards when I am using the exact same footprint for the cabs. I guess I will eventually get used to it.