You might know this as kitchen cabinet refinishing. Same work, either name. We refinish kitchen and bath cabinets in place: doors and drawer fronts stripped, sanded, primed and sprayed. You keep the boxes and the layout you already have and spend a fraction of what replacing them costs.
Every door, drawer front, hinge, and pull comes off and gets numbered so it returns to the exact opening it came from. Boxes rarely stay perfectly square over decades.
Cabinets near a cooktop carry a film of cooking oil that no primer will stick through. Surfaces get washed with a degreaser, rinsed, then scuff-sanded to kill the factory sheen.
Loose joints, chipped edges, and blown-out screw holes get fixed first. On oak, open grain is filled if you want a smooth painted face instead of visible grain texture.
The primer is picked for the substrate: shellac or a bonding primer over knotty wood and old stain, a specialty adhesion primer over thermofoil, melamine, or laminate fronts.
Doors are sprayed flat in a controlled area, two thin coats with a light sand between. Spraying is what removes brush marks and gets close to a factory-looking surface.
Doors go back on, hinges are adjusted so reveals line up, and new hardware is drilled from a jig. Bumper pads keep fresh finish from sticking to the frame.
If you are seeing any of this, call us before it gets more expensive.
| What you are seeing | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Paint peels in sheets at door edges | Thermofoil or laminate was coated without an adhesion primer |
| Yellow or brown stains bleed through white paint | Tannin or old stain migrating; needed a shellac-based blocking primer |
| Doors stick to the frame months later | Coating never fully cured, or bumpers were left off |
| Boxes sag or drawers bind before painting | Structural problem; painting will not fix it and hides it |
A door comes off and gets examined at the edge to identify wood, MDF, thermofoil, or laminate. That single check determines the primer, the risk, and a large share of the price.
Plastic sheeting seals the kitchen from the rest of the house, countertops and floors are covered, and doors and hardware come off and get labeled before any sanding starts.
Degreasing comes first because sanding a greasy surface grinds oil into the wood. Then scuff-sanding, filling of dents and old hardware holes, and grain filling if the finish calls for it.
A bonding primer is applied and sanded smooth, then two thin topcoats go on with light sanding between. Doors dry flat on racks so the coating levels instead of running at the edges.
Doors return to their labeled openings, hinges get adjusted for even reveals, and bumpers go on. The finish is usable in days but keeps hardening for two to four weeks.