Reface or refinish your Kitchen Cabinets

Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets – Cabinet refacing offers a lot of advantages to the homeowner, but there are many cases where refinishing your cabinets can be a good and economical choice.  Cabinet refacing offers a lot of advantages to the homeowner, but there are many cases where refinishing can be a good and economical choice. It’s common for folks to need more information to help decide between refacing and refinishing.

The reality is that if refinishing is the right solution for you, it could be a money-saving endeavor when compared to refacing. There are quite a few considerations.  To help figure out the best approach for your needs, Contact Ted at Plano Texas Handyman  or call 214-507-3415 to discuss your professional needs and Hire a Professional Handyman to remake your kitchen.  Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets

Lacquer for cabinet refinishing
First off, the finish that will give the best service in the kitchen is lacquer. To do a good refinishing job, you have to be willing to have a crew come in and spray finish your cabinet boxes in your kitchen.

This will take three to four days to accomplish, including a day to set up and mask everything off. It’s good to plan to go out of town while they are doing the work, because solvent borne lacquer gives off a lot of volatile fumes during application, which can remain in the air for a day or more.  Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets

Material matters for kitchen cabinets
Refinishing could also be the right good option if you like the cabinet doors you have now. The finish you are looking for is an important consideration. If you want to go from stained wood to a darker stained wood or to a solid color, this could be the way to go. However, you typically can’t go from a solid color to a stain.

The material under the solid color cabinets usually is not stainable. Cabinetmakers don’t buy expensive stain grade wood only to cover it up with an opaque color. Typically, white cabinets have doors that are milled out of medium density fiberboard (MDF), which cannot be stained to look like wood because it is not real wood.  Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets.

Even if the doors on solid color cabinets are real wood, they are likely paint grade, which means they still wouldn’t look good with stain, even if it were feasible to strip them to bare wood.

Oak cabinets are very poor candidates for refinishing. If you refinish them in a solid color, the grain will show right through the paint (lacquer or any other type). If a refinisher tells you otherwise, give him one of your doors or make him get a sample oak door and finish half of it to show you he really can hide the grain.

Update cabinet door hinges
Another area that is a problem for dye stain refinishing is if you have old visible “butterfly” hinges and want modern hidden hinges. This leaves the screw holes and impressions left by the old hinges to contend with.

If you are going to a solid color, butterfly hinges aren’t so much of an issue, as the screw holes can be filled. So can any hinge imprints in the cabinet face frames.  Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets.

Finally, if your existing finish is starting to come off, such as splitting Rigid ThermoFoil (RTF) you are not a candidate for refinishing. You could have the doors or drawers that are splitting replaced and then refinish, but what if more of them start splitting after you spend a good bit of money on a refinishing job? The point is that if you have a don’t have a good substrate to refinish, you are a much better candidate for refacing.

Cabinet Refacing
Kitchen cabinet refacing offers a tremendous bang for the buck.  That’s because the completed project gives the kitchen a brand-new look, yet the work is confined to the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. The cabinet frames—the boxes that contain the shelves and drawers—all remain in place. Strategically targeting the doors can save you a small fortune on labor and material costs, but ultimately the scope of the project depends on how you—and any professionals involved—decide to handle the doors.  Reface refinish Kitchen Cabinets.

There are a number of approaches to take. One option: If you like the style of your existing cabinet doors but not their finish, it may be possible to apply a new coat of paint or stain. Traditional refinishing isn’t always possible and it depends on what material the cabinets are made of.  For cabinet fronts constructed of a material that cannot be painted or stained, many homeowners consider adding a veneer. Others choose to install new cabinet doors, especially if the existing doors are damaged or out of fashion. With refacing, whatever route you take make sure that your kitchen doesn’t have to go out of commission for several weeks.

For all its virtues, cabinet refacing isn’t the right choice for every homeowner. If you do not like the current layout of your cabinets.  Giving the cabinets a new look would do nothing to alter or improve their usability. Similarly, if your cabinets are poorly constructed or in any way compromised, paying to reface them would be throwing good money after bad.  To help figure out the best approach for your needs, Contact Ted at Plano Texas Handyman  or call 214-507-3415 to discuss your professional needs and Hire a Professional Handyman to remake your kitchen.