01
Three options, one question: what stays?
The fastest way to choose is to ask what you want to keep.
- Painting (refinishing) keeps your cabinet boxes, your doors and your layout, and gives every visible surface a new sprayed finish.
- Refacing keeps the boxes and the layout. New doors and drawer fronts are made, and the boxes are covered with a veneer or laminate to match.
- Replacing tears the kitchen out. New boxes, new doors, and often new counters along with them.
02
Choose painting when
Your doors are solid and you like their shape, but the colour or finish looks dated: dark cherry, orange oak, espresso, yellowed white, tired thermofoil.
Painting changes the whole room without touching counters, floors or layout, and any colour is possible, including two-tone. Nothing new is manufactured, so there is nothing to wait for. The money you save on cabinets can go into countertops, hardware or lighting.
03
Choose refacing when
You want a different door style, for example raised panels to flat slabs, or the doors themselves are damaged beyond repair: swollen, broken or warped.
Painting keeps the shape of the doors you have. If the shape is the problem, refacing is the honest answer. The full comparison is on cabinet painting vs refacing.
04
Choose replacing when
The layout has to change: you want to move the sink, open a wall or add an island. Or the cabinets themselves are failing: structural damage, swollen particleboard, boxes coming apart.
Refinishing is not right for every kitchen, and if yours is one of these, I will say so from your photos.
05
What stays untouched when you paint
Counters, backsplash, floor, sink and appliances all stay. During the week they are covered with film and 3M masking, and they come out from under it on the last day exactly as they were.
In Westmount the quartz counters and the quartz island top stayed. In the cherry kitchen the butcher-block island top was kept natural, next to the new white and sage. That is often the point: you keep the parts of the kitchen you like and change the part that dates it.
06
What moves the cost
I do not publish a single price, because two kitchens with the same footprint can be very different jobs. What I look at in your photos: the number of doors and drawer fronts, the material, the condition, how big the colour change is, details like glass doors, mouldings and islands, and whether the hardware changes.
In most cases refinishing costs a fraction of replacing the kitchen. For a number on your own kitchen, read what cabinet painting costs and send photos for a free quote.
07
Look before you decide
Look at your colour chip next to your counters, in morning and evening light, and look at finished kitchens in the projects. For one client, quoted below, seeing a sample of the finished work is what settled it.
The fastest way to know which of the three options fits: send a few photos. I will tell you honestly whether your doors are worth painting.
