Kitchen cabinet painting gives a tired 1990s kitchen a fresh colour and a tough sprayed coat, and the boxes, countertop and sink never leave the wall. Each door is cleaned, scuffed, primed to suit its wood and sprayed before it is rehung.
Most East Credit kitchens were installed between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, and they are built from solid oak, honey maple or cherry doors on plywood or particleboard boxes. That stock is sound, and cabinet painting is usually the best value for it. The arched uppers found in so many of these houses have a page of their own at cathedral door cabinet painting.
Any honest quote opens with a tally of doors, drawer fronts and boxes. Each line of the price comes from those numbers.
Next, our kitchen cabinet painting quote lists the wood or surface we found, the matching primer, which topcoat product we will spray, what sheen and how many coats. Interiors are priced separately, since shelves and inner walls nearly double the surface. Crown trim, glass-front doors, patched knob holes, new handles and grain filling each carry their own price. Any change once work begins is written up and agreed before it happens.
Two quotes are only fair to compare when both list the same things. Ask any company you call to put the primer and the coat count in writing.
The count of doors and drawers sets the price, not the size of the room. Kitchens in the bigger detached houses here often include a pantry column, a desk nook, a peninsula and a run of uppers over the fridge, and every one of those pieces goes into the cabinet painting count.
A built-in desk or a glass-front hutch that came with the house is common in this era. Cabinet painting can include it in the same colour or leave it in wood as a contrast. Either way, it is priced as a separate item, which keeps the kitchen cabinet painting total is easy to follow.
The steps never change, because skipping one is what causes a painted kitchen to peel. The doors and drawer fronts come off, get numbered and have their hinges dropped into labelled bags, and we snap photos of the layout.
Degreasing is the step that settles whether paint sticks. Three decades of family cooking in an East Credit kitchen leave a sticky layer above the stove and around every knob, and household sprays barely touch it. We cut heavy buildup with a solvent degreaser and list that on the quote. Then come patching, a uniform scuff sand, and primer: shellac-based for oak, maple and cherry, a grip-coat primer for melamine or thermofoil.
At the shop, fronts receive two or three topcoats. At the house, boxes and face frames receive matching coats inside the plastic tent. Our cabinet spray painting page describes how the two halves fit together.
A typical kitchen cabinet painting job needs two or three days of on-site work, spread over one to two weeks while the doors are in the booth. Dark colours such as navy or deep green add a coat and a little time.
Water, fridge and range all keep running. Everyday dishes can sit on the open shelving while the doors are away. Only one day is really inconvenient, the day the boxes get sprayed, and we pick that day with you so the family can still eat.
A coat that feels dry is not yet a hard coat. Waterborne enamel dries within hours, wants roughly seven days before regular handling and takes about four weeks to reach full hardness. Catalyzed urethane is hard by the following morning. Sticky August humidity in Mississauga slows waterborne curing, and if it does, we tell you to baby the doors a few days longer.
Locally, full-kitchen cabinet painting mostly costs from $2,500 up to $5,500. Smaller rooms sometimes start around $1,500, and big kitchens with an island or two colours can run from $6,000 up to $9,000 and past it. On a per-door basis, local pricing runs roughly $130 to $250.
Refacing, where new fronts go onto your existing carcasses, typically costs from $3,000 up to $10,000. Ripping everything out for new cabinets generally begins around $15,000 and may top $40,000. Grain filling, bonding primer and squared arches push the painting price up. Treat all of these as a local guide, since your written quote is the only figure that binds.
Most painted cabinets fail for one of four reasons: grease sealed beneath the primer, a surface that was never scuffed, a primer that does not suit the wood or plastic, or ordinary wall paint brushed onto a door. Wall paint stays soft and never stands up to daily hands.
Wear shows first where hands grab, beside the handles and on the upper lip of the utensil drawer. Hard, thin spray layers outlast a heavy brushed film in exactly those places, and that is exactly why our kitchen cabinet painting is built up in fine sprayed passes.
A fine gap along a panel edge in January means the wood has shrunk, not that the coating let go. Most of those gaps close up when summer humidity returns.
Expect the visit to run under an hour, free of charge. We tally the doors, identify the wood and inspect the roughest door closely, then email a written cabinet painting quote that lines up against any competitor's. Call +1 (365) 217-9589, share a few kitchen details, or head back to the home page for every service.
Ensuite vanities, laundry uppers, pantry towers and wall units are primed and topcoated just like the kitchen.
Arched cathedral doors can be painted as they are, filled to a square top, or swapped for flat shaker doors while the rest of the kitchen is painted. Cabinet painting on these doors starts with one decision about the curve, and we price every option at the visit.
See Cathedral Doors
Oak cabinet painting needs a stain-blocking primer because oak tannin bleeds brown through water-based products. The open grain also telegraphs through paint unless it is filled level before the topcoats go on.
See Oak Cabinets
Cabinet refinishing removes the old clear coat by sanding or stripping, refreshes the stain tone and locks the colour in under a fresh sprayed clear topcoat. We recommend it instead of paint whenever the grain is the best feature in the room.
See Refinishing
A spray gun breaks the coating into tiny droplets that flow together and level before they set, leaving no brush lines or roller stipple. Cabinet painting applied this way looks much like a finish from a cabinet factory.
See Spray Painting
Shiny factory doors keep paint only when a purpose-made bonding primer goes on first and the surface itself is still firmly attached. Cabinet painting does well on solid melamine and firmly bonded thermofoil, but a vinyl skin that is already lifting is past saving with a coating.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
Refacing hangs brand-new doors and drawer fronts on the carcasses already in your kitchen, while door replacement swaps only the few doors that are damaged or out of style. Both are often paired with cabinet painting so the new and old parts finish in one matching colour.
See Refacing and New Doors
Light uppers over darker lowers, or a painted perimeter with a contrasting island, are the two-tone layouts people ask for most. A lone island is a full cabinet painting job in its own right and one of the quickest ways to change a room.
See Two-Tone and Islands
Most vanities take one or two days, and no job we do is easier to live around. The doors are sprayed at the shop, the base is sprayed on site, and after cabinet painting the bathroom is back in service fast.
See Bathroom Vanities
Condo and townhouse kitchens are small, usually ten to twenty doors, and the job moves quickly once the building rules are sorted out. Cabinet painting in a shared complex works best when parking, work hours and noise are planned first.
See Condo Kitchens
Pantry cupboards, laundry uppers, mudroom lockers, family room wall units and bookcases receive the primer and sprayed enamel the kitchen does. Since most are fastened in place, their cabinet painting happens on site inside a plastic tent.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Leftover knob holes are plugged and filled so the new colour hides them completely, and new holes for pulls are bored off a jig so each handle sits level. Tired hinges get swapped during cabinet painting, since the doors are down anyway.
See Hardware and Hinges
Paint chips under store lights are a poor guide, so we spray one of your actual doors in your favourite candidate shade and leave it standing in the room. The shades we are asked for most in cabinet painting right now are warm white, cream, greige, sage and deep green.
See Colour ConsultationWe visit, tally each door and drawer, identify the material and list the whole job on paper. Neither the visit nor the quote costs you anything.
Share any cabinet details you have handy, and we will call to book a time. The form goes through with just a name and a number. To talk it over by phone, call +1 (365) 217-9589.
