Cabinet Refacing Company in Tampa Bay & Central Florida

What kitchen cabinet refacing is, and when it is the wrong choice

Refacing keeps the part of your kitchen that is expensive and hard to replace — the boxes, the layout, the shelves — and changes the part you actually look at. Your existing doors and drawer fronts come off permanently and are replaced with new ones in the style you choose. The frames stay put and are finished to match.

It is the right answer when the cabinets are sound but the door style is dated. It is the wrong answer in three cases, and we will say so rather than take the job:

• The boxes are failing. Water damage under the sink, delaminating carcasses, or shelves that no longer hold weight are structural problems. New doors on failing boxes is money spent on the wrong half of the kitchen.
• You actually like your doors. If the profile is fine and the color is the problem, cabinet painting does the same job for roughly half the money. Refacing throws away doors that had nothing wrong with them.
• The layout has to change. Moving a run of cabinets or reworking the island is a remodel, not a resurfacing.

If your cabinets are stained wood and you want to keep the grain visible rather than replace the doors outright, cabinet refinishing is the closer fit.

Is cabinet resurfacing the same as cabinet refacing?

Not quite, and the difference is worth knowing before you compare quotes.

Cabinet resurfacing is a loose term. Some companies use it to mean refacing — new doors and drawer fronts, with the frames finished to match. Others use it to mean refinishing, where your existing doors stay on and only the finish changes. Both are real services at real prices, and they are not the same job.

The question that separates them is whether you want the door itself to change. If the profile of your doors is what dates the kitchen, resurfacing the ones you have will not fix it — the shape is the problem, and that means refacing. If the doors are a shape you still like and it is the colour or a worn finish bothering you, cabinet refinishing or cabinet painting is the cheaper and better answer.

We do all three, so we have no reason to steer you toward the expensive one. We will tell you which your kitchen actually needs.

Our process

Assessment and door selection. We look at what you have, confirm the boxes are worth building on, and go through door styles, materials, and finishes with you. This is the step that decides everything downstream, so it happens before anything is ordered.

Door and hardware removal. The existing doors, drawer fronts, hinges, and pulls come off and leave. Unlike painting, they are not coming back.

Frame preparation. The boxes are cleaned, degreased, and prepared for finishing. What is under the old finish decides how much preparation this takes, which is why the assessment matters.

Frame finishing. What happens to the frames follows from the look you are going for, and there are two paths.

Going stained? You get new stained doors, and the frames and boxes are veneered in a matching stain. Veneer is how you carry a wood look across surfaces that are staying put.

Going with a solid painted color? Most refacing companies laminate the frames. We paint them instead. A painted frame looks better than a laminated one, it holds up longer, and it costs less than lamination — so this is not a corner we are cutting, it is the better version of the job at a lower number. It is also the single biggest difference between our refacing and most quotes you will get.

New door and drawer front installation. Your new doors and drawer fronts go on, aligned and adjusted to the frames they are hanging from.

Hardware and final inspection. Hinges and pulls are installed, alignment and reveals are checked across every opening, and we walk the finished kitchen with you before we leave.

Questions to ask before you accept a refacing quote

Refacing quotes vary more than painting quotes, because two of them can describe genuinely different work. Ask:

1. Are the doors solid wood or MDF, and which style? These are physical products with different prices. A quote that does not name what you are getting is not a quote you can compare against another one.
2. If I want a painted kitchen, are you laminating the frames or painting them? Most refacing companies laminate. Laminate costs more than paint, does not look as good, and does not last as long. If a quote does not say which one you are getting, ask before you sign.
3. What happens to the existing hardware? New doors often need new hinges. Confirm whether they are included or come as an extra later.
4. What is the condition of my boxes, and did anyone actually check? Refacing puts new doors onto old structure. If nobody opened the cabinets and looked underneath the sink, nobody has confirmed the structure is worth building on.
5. What does the warranty cover, and who honors it? Ask who you call in year two, and whether they will still be in business when you do.

What it costs, and how it compares

Most refaced kitchens land between $7,000 and $12,000. Where you fall in that range is driven by how many doors and drawer fronts you have, which style and material you choose, and whether you are going stained — which means veneering the frames — or painted, which does not.

That sits in a specific place on the ladder, and it is worth seeing the whole thing:

• Cabinet painting — $3,500 to $6,500. Keeps your doors, changes the finish.
• Cabinet refacing — $7,000 to $12,000. New doors, existing boxes.
• Full replacement — $12,000 to $25,000+. Everything out, everything new.

Notice where refacing ends and replacement begins. If your refacing quote is at the top of its range, you are close to replacement money without getting new boxes — and that is worth knowing before you commit, not after. We will tell you when that is the case. We would rather lose a job than sell you the more expensive version of the wrong thing.

“I could get new cabinets for that price”

Almost everyone has this thought, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a defensive one. On the surface it is true: for the money, you often can buy the cabinets themselves.

The catch is that cabinets are not a finished kitchen. Getting them in also means tearing out and hauling away what is there now, removing the countertops — which usually do not survive being taken off, so budget for new ones — disconnecting and reconnecting the sink, faucet and disposal, dealing with under-cabinet lighting and any outlets that have to move, the installation itself, and then patching the drywall, paint and flooring the old cabinets had been hiding. That is the gap between the cabinet price you found and what the finished kitchen actually costs.

Then there is the question that matters more and gets asked less: what are you trading?

Plenty of kitchens around here have solid wood or plywood boxes. Cabinets at the affordable end of “new” are frequently particleboard or MDF with a printed finish. New is not the same as better. If the boxes you already own are sound, replacing them with cheaper material is a downgrade wearing the word new — you would be paying to lose build quality, and it will look like an upgrade right up until the first time something gets wet.

That is the honest case for refacing: keep the structure, which may well be better than what you would buy, and change the part you actually look at.

Start with your ZIP code and a few short questions about your kitchen, and we will come back with a real number.