Anyone Ever Refinish/Reface Kitchen Cabinets?

[Deleted]

We're looking at a great house in a great location, but one that needs a little bit of work. The house is dated, but well maintained by the original owner.

One of the items that I thought might be kind of bigger ticket was the kitchen. It is kinda dated and my wife would like to update. It doesn't really make sense to replace, since they look in ok condition and the configuration is ok.

So has anyone refaced or refinished cabinets? I'm getting some differing opinions online (probably by biased posters). Some say that refacing them costs about 40% of the cost and can be done without the mess. And I've heard refinishing is about 10% of the cost.

Any idea of the cost and how it looked?

[Wisconsin Beth]

We looked at doing this for our kitchen, several years ago. We were told $200 a surface/drawer/door. So for our kitchen, it would have been around $6K to have this guy do it. But our cabinets are pretty crappy and not worth it.

The DIY shows make it look relatively easy to refinish on your own. I remember my Mom spending an entire summer working on her kitchen cabinets - sanding, staining and possibly a finish coat. I don't remember it being messy but my Mom is pretty tidy.

[Deleted]

Thanks Beth. The quote I see being tossed around is $125/opening and that includes everything. That would be around $3K I think. Still seems high, but they do look nice.

[thyme4change]

My friend's hired a professional painter who re-did their cabinets, but I think they got a friends & family discount because (1) they were friends with the guy and (2) they own bunches of rentals, so the repeat business was worth the discount. I'm thinking it cost them less than $2k, and the guy spent 7 or 8 days working on it (over 3 weeks.)

It is a really good thing to do if the cabinet boxes are high quality. We took out our old, ugly cabinets and replaced them with the home depot cheesy screw together kind. The new cabinets looked really nice, but the quality is lower for sure. Also, I found the top cabinets to be shallow. My plates just barely fit in there. The old cabinets held so much more. So, even if it costs you almost what new, cheap cabinets would cost, you still might be better off.

[HoneyBBQ]

What kind of cabinets? I painted ones we used to have. Took them off the hinges, sanded them and painted them. Reattached with new hardware. They looked fantastic when they were done.

[Tiny]

You probably need to say what kind of cabinets you have.

At the 'family home' my mom had me re-paint the metal kitchen cabinets to 'freshen up' the kitchen. Total cost less than $10.00 and a Saturday.
My fixer upper had original cabinetry from 1947. The varnish had mostly moved down the front of the doors and was sticky in places. I pulled all the doors and drawers and spent several days stripping the old varnish off them and all the other exposed wood I couldn't remove from the kitchen (I did mar the floor with a blop of stripper ). I spent 2 days stripping, a day sanding, a day staining, and then 3 days putting on 3 coats of polyurethane. Total cost alot of time and probably less than $50.00 for everything (stripper, tools, sand paper, steel wool, 3 stains for samples to choose from, the actual stain, and the polyurathane, and a really good brush). Was worth every moment of time. The cabinets work perfectly, were in pretty good shape and now 14 years later still look good (and still work! - nothing to break on old stuff!)

So, what kind of cabinets do you have?

[bean29]

My Mom did hers many years ago. I think it was a lot of work but it did turn out well. She has since remodelled her kitchen and purchase new cabinets. I have a 5 year old house and I would agree with Thyme...if the boxes are high quality you may want to refinish to save the space. In my 1950's house I had a custom built wall cabinet next house was 6 years old when we moved in (built in 1996) kitchen was bigger but barely had more cabinet space b/c they were not as deep and tall as the old cabinets.

We visited my Aunt and Uncle last year and I notice my Aunt had also refinished her cabinets.

My question to you is have you ever done any wood staining or refinishing work? Both my Mom and my Aunt had done a lot of Antiques before they tackled the cabinets in the kitchen. I am pretty sure my Mom said she would not do it again due to the amount of work involved.

Also consider the type of wood? The popular woods today are Cherry and Maple I think, will you be satisfied with the work?

DH went to Sherwin Williams and had our stain for our woodwork hand mixed to match our cabinets. If you do tackle a project like this you should workk with someone like that rather than a big box retailer with a college student working the paint desk.

[Tiny]

Yeah, I had quite a bit of experience with the whole stripping/staining work before taking on the kitchen cabinets. I've done wooden kitchen chairs, a couple of tables, and a dresser or two and maybe some bookshelfs... I'm really glad I grew up in high miantenance old house that needed seemingly constant repair/maintenace (or maybe my mom just used the never ending painting, repairing, cleaning to keep us kids out of trouble....)

[Clever Username]

We did a kitchen remodel last year. The whole process felt like a decision cascade. Think it all the way through each way.

In our case, one major change we wanted was structural. We had good quality cabinets, but needed to be rid of a small wall oven (Four Thanksgivings cooked in the basement was enough).
The good news is once we got used to the sticker shock for the replace (instead of reface) decision, it meant the entire layout was up for grabs.
Wider fridge? Sign me up! Add a bookshelf? Awesome! Ditch that useless desk? Sure. Move the fridge to the other side? Kitchen triangle! More counter space? Everyone wants that!

If I went back today and had a solution where I could reface at the lower costs, but be stuck with the old layout, I'd pay to replace.

[qofcc]

Just so we're clear, refacing is when you adhere laminate material to the surface of the cabinets. It's usually the most expensive option and difficult for a do-it-yourself project.

Refinishing is when you strip off the existing finish and put on a new finish. It's necessary if the existing finish is peeling or uneven or you want to go with a lighter stain.

The least expensive and least time consuming option assuming the current finish is in good condition and you just want to change the color is to just re-paint or re-stain the cabinets. I've done that a few times. First, you need to take off all of the hardware. Next you clean everything thoroughly with mineral spirits. Then you sand lightly and wipe everything down with a tack cloth or microfiber cloth to remove the dust. Then, you paint or stain the cabinet faces and each of the doors/drawers (you can screw cup hooks into the top or bottom edge (the one that doesn't show) and hang them on wire hangers on a rod to dry. If you're staining, obviously you can go darker, but not lighter. If you're painting, you'll want to use primer. Finally you re-assemble. You might want to change the knobs at this time.

If you look at some of the decorating magazines, it seems to be a trend to have most of the cabinets one finish and the island or a focal point a different finish or to have the top cabinets one color and the bottom a different color. What do your current cabinets look like - why do they look dated?

[Deleted]

"Refacing" is also used when someone changes out the doors and drawer fronts.

When we bought our first house it was really disgusting with a lot of grease stains all over the kitchen cabinets. I could never really get them clean so I painted them white (early nineties when white wash was in). That turned out o.k. but when I tried to change out the hinges from an exterior mount to a more interior mount the doors overlapped. So DH's buddy offered to use his table saw only he forgot to calculate the width of the saw so when I tried to re-hang them...you got it it looked like a gapped-tooth smile

Needless to say we couldn't "undo" the sawing so we wound up replacing all the doors with a paint grade door which I painted myself. It looked o.k. The cabinets were actually kind of crappy; you could see where the nails were not pounded in straight inside the cabinets. But we were planning to sell so didn't want to spend the money to replace the boxes. It did the trick in terms of the place looking clean and move-in ready and we got a buyer right away. And my feelings weren't hurt when the first thing the new buyers did was rip out the kitchen cabinets (he owned his own kitchen and bath cabinet business) LOL.

[murphath]

I did our cabinets about 5 years ago and they came out beautiful. Stripped, sanded, primed, and painted. Put on new handles and spray painted the hinges etc.. Everyone always remarks how beautiful they look and they really like the color. Can't take credit for that--I say it in Sunset Magazine and they very kindly put the paint info in the article.

I also redid my SIL's cabinets last Fall--I'm retired and wanted to help her out. Hers were looking pretty bad. She wanted them to be white so that's what I did. She then had the old wallpaper removed and painted the walls a lime green and yellow combo (one wall green, the other yellow, etc.) It really looks very nice.

Repainting the cabinets is time consuming. Mostly the prep work. Helps if you have a sander. I did mine the good old fashioned way: by hand. But my BIL used a sander for the bulk of his. I just had to get into the nooks and crannies.

[2kids10horses]

The last house I flipped, I completely replaced the cabinets. The old ones were the solid builder's white. I replaced them with natural maple. The actual fronts were a maple veneer, not solid maple. I did add decorative panels on the ends (exterior sides of the cabinetry) that were solid maple. I also installed matching crown molding. Then I put in UbaTuba granite. Undermount stainless steep sink. Stainless appliances.

The house before that had white thermofoil cabinets. There were a LOT of them, so it would have been too expensive to replace them. Some of the thermofoil was delaminating. These were the door fronts around the stove. Heat does that to them. Rather than replace the cabinets, I just replaced the delaminating door fronts. I went to a cabinet shop and had them order them for me directly from the factory. It appears that this had been done once before as the millwork on the delaminating doors did not match the ones that were across the kitchen.