If you want to spruce up your kitchen, either your own or for a house you’ve purchased to resell, it’s always your first dream to be able to buy entirely new cabinets. However,it’ss common for the budget crunch to come along and convince you to look for another option.
Fortunately, you can achieve a similarly impressive overhaul by simply doing a little kitchen cabinet refacing. Refacing cabinets typically involves replacing or painting the doors and drawers, getting new kitchen hardware, and touching up the cabinet body fronts.
Key Considerations Before Refacing Kitchen Cabinets
| Assess Your Kitchen Layout | Don’t bother refacing cabinets if your kitchen doesn’t meet the basic criteria. Make sure your kitchen layout suits your needs, as refacing won’t change the positioning of your current cabinets. It’s cost-effective but purely cosmetic. |
| Check the Condition of Existing Cabinets | Before refacing, ensure your cabinets are structurally sound. Check all panels to confirm they’re firmly attached. If any areas are damaged, fixing them first is essential before considering any cosmetic upgrades. Don’t forget to inspect the drawers and make sure the joints are strong. |
| Understand the Benefits and Limitations | Dovetail joints tend to last much longer than stapled ones. Refacing cabinets improves appearance but won’t strengthen the structure. However, it can increase both the actual and perceived value of your home — a definite advantage if you plan to sell your property. |
The good news is that kitchen cabinet refacing is less intrusive than replacing cabinets. You can update each cabinet separately and continue using others during the process. There’s also less dust, less mess, and less noise. All benefits are worthy of consideration.
In our old house, we had these really nasty cabinets that needed a lot of help. Their base structure wasn’t good enough for total replacement, so we just went with the cabinet refacing idea. That led us to painting kitchen cabinets.
Basic Touchups
Painting kitchen cabinets is the quickest and simplest way to spruce up your cabinetry. You have to be careful, but it doesn’t take a degree in woodworking to do it. We recommend only painting cabinets that are already painted. Painting over wood cabinets is considered sacrilege to some homeowners and could actually devalue your kitchen.
For wood cabinets (non-laminate you can refinish them. You’ll need to strip off the old finish with varnish and then refinish the cabinets with a polyurethane coating. Consider lighting the wood for a completely different look.
The most common thing people do when refacing kitchen cabinets is to replace the doors and drawer fronts. This is more expensive than painting but far less costly than all new cabinets. It can also be a lot of fun and give the appearance of a whole new kitchen in just a few simple steps. The cabinets themselves will need to have the knicks and scratches repaired to maintain the freshness of your new look.
- Be sure to measure the doors and drawers carefully so the new ones fit exactly.
- You don’t want to get replacements too large or too small.
- The wait time for new doors is usually around 2-3 weeks.
- It is advised that you choose your new hardware (if you intend to get any) before you install the new cabinet doors so that you can take one with you and make sure the hardware matches the door style.
- Grossly disproportionate hardware would ruin the effect you’re trying to achieve.
Updating Cabinet Doors Without Full Replacement
If you don’t want to replace the entire cabinet door, you could just replace the inset pieces with clear or stained glass (imagine the beautiful lighting from stained glass door fronts!). If the door panels are entirely flat with no insets, you could add a decorative molding to the exteriors (cheap and easy) for a new look, also. Molding pieces run a couple of dollars each at any hardware store and come in a variety of sizes, colors, a nd styles.
