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Cabinets: reface, repaint, or replace?
Three very different jobs that get talked about as if they were one. How to tell which one you need, and when the cheap one is the right one.
A kitchen can be transformed without being torn out. It can also be polished up when it should have been replaced, which is worse, because you paid to postpone something. What decides it is almost never the doors you are looking at. It is the boxes: the carcasses screwed to the wall and standing on the floor.
Start by checking the boxes
Open a door and look inside. Are the sides solid and square, or has the material swelled or come apart somewhere, especially under the sink? Do the shelves sag? Pull a drawer all the way out and look at how it is built and whether the runners are worn. Push gently on a wall cabinet. It should not move at all.
If the boxes are sound, you have options. If they are not, everything after that is money spent on a bad foundation.
The three jobs
- Repaint. Boxes and doors both stay. They get properly cleaned, degreased, sanded, primed and finished. On solid wood doors it is hard to believe until you see it. The whole result lives in the preparation. Cabinet doors carry years of grease and hand oil, and paint over grease fails no matter what went into the can.
- Reface. Boxes stay. Doors and drawer fronts are replaced, and the visible faces of the boxes get covered to match. That changes the door style, not just the color, and it leaves your layout exactly where it is.
- Replace. All of it out. The only route if the boxes have gone, and the only route if you want the layout to change: moving a run, relocating the tall units, opening something up.
How to decide quickly
If you like the layout and you like the doors, and the boxes are sound, repaint. If the layout works but the doors look dated, reface. If you catch yourself describing how the room ought to be arranged instead, you are describing a replace, and refacing will not scratch that itch.
One thing worth knowing whichever way you go. Hardware and hinges are the cheapest meaningful upgrade in the room. Soft-close hinges on doors you already own change how the place feels to use, every single day. That is the sort of thing I would rather talk you into than a tear-out.
Send me a few photos. A wide shot of the run, one with a door open so I can see the box, one with a drawer pulled out. That is usually enough to tell you which of the three you are looking at. If it is a replace, building cabinets is part of what I do.
Related: Custom Cabinets
More from the blog
- How I price a job, and why I won't guess over the phone
- The new-build punch list your builder never came back for
- Is your shower failing, or just ugly?
- Before you call anyone: the photos to send
- One visit or three? How to group a punch list
- Drywall cracks: which ones matter and which ones don't
- Why a texture repair shows, and how matching actually works
- Choosing flooring that survives a Central Texas house
- Gutters: what they are actually protecting, and when to clean them
- After a Texas storm: what to check, and in what order
- Interior painting: the preparation is the job
- Building outdoors in this sun: what actually lasts
Ready to get that list handled?
Send a few photos and I'll tell you what it takes, in writing, before anything starts. I work across Leander, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Round Rock and the towns nearby.