New doors and drawer fronts go onto boxes that are still square and sound, either one damaged door or a whole set. Refacing costs a fraction of tearing the kitchen out and starting over.
Kitchen boxes outlast their fronts by decades. A Stanley Park kitchen from the 1970s or a Doon kitchen from the 1990s will very often have carcasses in good order behind doors that have had enough, and cabinet painting alone will not fix a door that has split.
One Failed Door Does Not Put A Kitchen Beyond Cabinet Painting
The sink base door swells along its bottom edge because of years of slow drips. The door beside the dishwasher delaminates because of steam. A rail cracks where a child swung on it. Meanwhile the other twenty-eight pieces are fine.
A single matching door or drawer front can be built and hung, then painted in with the rest so the repair vanishes into the finish. That is the cheapest route back to a kitchen that looks whole, and it is a standard part of cabinet painting rather than a separate trade. The count of replacement pieces goes on the quote as its own line.
Refacing Keeps The Boxes While Cabinet Painting Handles The Frames
Full refacing means every door and drawer front is new, the exposed box ends and face frames are covered or painted to match, and the layout, plumbing and counters stay exactly where they are. The kitchen is out of action for a fraction of the time a renovation takes.
Refacing across Canada runs roughly $3,000 to $10,000 for an average kitchen, with the material driving most of the spread. Melamine fronts are the cheapest per linear foot, thermofoil next, then acrylic, then solid wood at the top. Paired with cabinet painting on the boxes and frames, refacing gives a factory-matched result without the demolition.
Refacing Against Cabinet Painting Against Replacing
Painting is the least expensive of the three by a wide margin, and for doors that are structurally sound it delivers the same visual change. Kitchen cabinet painting is the right call whenever the fronts are solid, whatever they are made of.
Refacing earns its money when the doors themselves have failed or when the household wants a different door profile, a shaker instead of a cathedral arch for instance. Replacement is the only answer when boxes are swollen, racked or badly laid out, and it runs $15,000 to $40,000 and up. Those are market ranges, and the written quote is the number that applies here.
New Doors Still Need A Proper Cabinet Painting Finish
New doors arrive from the shop either raw or factory primed, and a factory primer coat is not a finish. It still needs sanding, a proper undercoater, two or three sprayed topcoats and cure time before it goes into service.
Doing the new doors and the existing boxes in the same products at the same time is the only way to get a colour match a person cannot pick out across the room. That is why replacement doors and cabinet painting are quoted together rather than as two separate jobs with two separate schedules. Hinges usually get swapped at the same time, which is covered on the hardware and soft-close page.
Get One Door Or A Whole Set Priced With The Cabinet Painting
Photograph the damaged door and one good door beside it, and the difference is usually obvious straight away. Call +1 (226) 271-7725 or use the contact form with the piece count, and the quote will price a single replacement, a full reface and a straight repaint separately. The complete cabinet painting service list is worth a look before deciding.
Cabinet Refacing and Door Replacement Questions
When does refacing make sense?
When the doors themselves have failed, or you want a different profile such as shaker instead of a cathedral arch. If the fronts are solid, painting costs less.
Can one damaged door be replaced?
Yes. A single new door or drawer front can be made and finished to match, and it is priced as a line on the quote rather than as a whole kitchen.
Do new doors still need finishing?
Unfinished doors need primer and a sprayed topcoat like any other. Replacement doors are finished in the same booth as the originals so the whole kitchen matches.