Cabinet Refacing & Refinishing · Kitchener

Cabinet Refacing and Refinishing in Kitchener

Refacing is a real trade with real limits. Done properly it replaces every surface you see and touch for a fraction of the cost of new cabinets. Done badly it is paint over oak grain that starts to fail in a year.

A great many Kitchener kitchens built from the 1970s through the 1990s have cabinet boxes that are in good shape and doors that date the whole house. Honey oak raised panels with cathedral arches, a soffit above the uppers, exposed hinges, and a finish that has gone orange. Refacing keeps the boxes and replaces everything else, and when the boxes qualify it is the best value in kitchen cabinetry.

What refacing actually includes

• New doors and drawer fronts in the style and finish you choose, built to the measured openings. Painted shaker in MDF is the common request; stained wood doors are available too.
• New surfaces on every visible part of the box: face frames, end panels and the underside of uppers get matching wood veneer or a laminate, so there is no old oak peeking out beside a new door.
• New hinges, almost always concealed soft-close, which on an old kitchen means boring the new doors for them and often adding mounting plates to the frames.
• New drawer boxes on soft-close runners where the old ones are stapled particleboard on centre-mount slides, which they usually are.
• New pulls and knobs, and filling the old holes so they do not show.
• Optional additions: removing the soffit and adding a row of cabinets above the uppers, adding a pantry cabinet, replacing a lazy susan corner with a blind-corner pull-out, or adding crown.

Refacing versus refinishing

Refinishing means keeping the existing doors and changing their colour. On oak it is harder than it sounds: the open grain telegraphs through paint unless it is filled, the old finish has to be fully de-glossed, and raised-panel doors have a lot of edges for a finish to chip at. A professional spray refinish with grain filling can look very good and is the cheapest option; a brush-and-roller job over the existing finish rarely lasts. Refinishing also keeps the cathedral arch, which for many people is the thing they want gone. Refacing replaces the door, so the style changes as well as the colour.

When refacing is the wrong answer

• Boxes that are swollen or delaminated under the sink or beside the dishwasher from years of small leaks.
• Shelves and bottoms in particleboard that have sagged or bowed.
• Boxes that have pulled away from the wall or are no longer square, so doors cannot be aligned.
• A layout that is the real problem. Refacing a kitchen with a bad layout gives you a better-looking bad layout.

The measure visit is where this gets decided, cabinet by cabinet. It is normal for a kitchen to be mostly refaceable with one or two boxes replaced, and that mixed answer is quoted as such.

Schedule and disruption

Doors, fronts and veneer are made to the measure, so there is a wait while your kitchen carries on working. The installation itself is typically a few days, the kitchen stays usable through most of it, and there is no demolition, no plumbing disconnect and no permit question, because nothing on the City of Kitchener's permit list is touched.

Frequently asked questions

Serving Kitchener and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.