My contractor has built my "dream" temporary kitchen. I read a lot of posts about the horrors of temporary kitchens and even have a few friends who are living those horrors. I hope this helps someone.

My contractor demo'ed my kitchen two months ago. In the demo process, he cut away the cabs on both sides of the dishwasher and sink and left the d/w and sink in place. Same with the cooktop, except he pulled that box out from the wall to provide access for electrical work and extended the connecting hose for the gas. Both of these setups were screwed into the floor to stabilize them. We moved two base cabinets into an adjoining room and set them on cardboard to protect the floor. That's where my dishes are stored and the coffee pot is (thankfully!). The fridge was moved into the dining room. The microwave found a new home on an old cart. Lost my wall oven. All the rough-in work is going on around this set-up and even though I'm spread out amongst 3 rooms, I do have a working kitchen, a sink AND a dishwasher!

For the safety experts amongst us, I wouldn't recommend it for houses with small kids. I do have pets, and tween age children and it's fine. We've had inspectors through on numerous occasions and they all seem fine with the temp setup.

I know it won't work in all situations. I am enlarging the kitchen which helps because the rough-in plumbing for the new sink and d/w is in a different location from the existing one. It also helped that we talked this through with the contractor during contract negotiations so the setup was treated as part of the job, not extra work we were asking for. And as I mentioned, not with small children in the house. Hope this helps even one person out there!