Cabinet Refacing: The Facts
If your kitchen is looking dull and worn, before you rip out your old cabinets and replace them, consider getting them refaced. Kitchen cabinet refacing involves removing the cabinet drawers and doors and replacing them with new ones. If you don’t have cabinets, you will need to buy new ones. If you already have cabinets, you should definitely consider a cabinet reface as one of your options.
Why should you consider refacing? There are many reasons. First of all, the cabinets you have now may well be better quality than the new ones you will buy. Most cabinets used to be made of solid wood, but these days the majority of them only have solid wood doors and drawer fronts. The rest of the cabinets are made from cheap particle board. Refacing kitchen cabinets lets you keep your quality cabinets intact (if you have them), and only replace the parts that are visible from the outside. In addition, it is a lot quicker, easier, and cheaper to reface cabinets than to replace them with new ones.
If your cabinets look really, really bad, chances are they will need to be thrown away and replaced. Cabinet resurfacing may hide some things, but if your cabinets are really falling apart, it is better in the long run to just replace them. For example, if your cabinets have extensive termite damage, or moisture has rotted the particle board away, it might be time to consider replacing them.
Kitchen Cabinet Refacing Cost
A typical cabinet refacing cost is between $5,000 and $8,000. Compare this with $12,000 minimum for new cabinets, and you can see that you can save 50% right there. What’s more, if you are handy and have the time and desire to figure out how to do it on your own, do it yourself cabinet refacing can save thousands of dollars off your typical cabinet refacing cost. It actually isn’t that hard a job, and most people can complete the task in a weekend.
Although you might be cringing at the expense, resurfacing kitchen cabinets will add value to your home. The kitchen is arguably the most important room of the house. Home inspectors know this, and will look closely at your cabinets when determining the value of your house or apartment. If the insides look fine and have little or no visible damage, you should be able to reface kitchen cabinets. If however, the insides look awful, it is most likely better to just replace them.
If you are going to hire professionals to do your kitchen cabinet resurfacing, here is a checklist to make sure that quality work has been done:
- Open and close each door and drawer. Make sure they close easily and return to the correct place
- Take a look and make sure the doors and drawers line up and are level. Hinges that are incorrectly installed can cause gaps and doors that are not level.
- Make sure the colors are all the same. You might have a completely different color than you had before. This is fine, as long as all doors, drawers, and trim match.