When your cabinet doors and fronts are worn beyond repair, or you're just tired of looking at the same old thing, you have two choices: replace them or reface them.
Your Kitchen's Best Face
With the kitchen being such a focal point of the home, you'll want to make sure that it not only looks its best, but that it is also functional. Resale value of your home is obviously an important consideration, too. Prospective buyers will be willing to pay more for an attractive, functional modern kitchen. But a complete kitchen re-design can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months to finish.
That's why more and more homeowners are turning to kitchen cabinet refacing to give their kitchens a fresh look and increase home values. Renovating doors and refacing kitchen cabinets comes in at a fraction of the cost of having new cabinets and doors installed much less having a whole new kitchen installed. Furthermore, there are numerous small businesses set up to make the job easy and affordable. If you want to keep prices even lower and do the work yourself, there is an abundance of materials you can use and resources to help you with the job.
When Is It Time to Consider Cabinet Refacing?
Following are some questions you should answer:
* Are your kitchen cabinet drawers and door fronts starting to look faded or overly worn?
* Do you sometimes have difficulty effortlessly opening your kitchen cabinets and/or drawers due to wear and tear?
* Are your kitchen cabinets starting to look like their style is from a bygone era? Are they made of bright/ugly colors like yellow, burnt orange, or lime green that just scream '70s?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, chances are that visitors or potential home buyers will too. That's why kitchen cabinet refacing is a great option if you plan to sell your home.
Styles Galore
Companies that specialize in cabinet refacing will have literally hundreds of styles for you to choose from as well as all the add-on features you desire, such as roll-out shelves, high-quality drawer slides, and more. If you decide to go this route, you'll meet with a professional designer and discuss the look you're hoping to achieve with your kitchen. The company will measure your kitchen and prepare a detailed design plan. Once you approve the plan, it will build all of the custom doors, drawer fronts, cabinet facing, and other elements to your specification. Staff will install the attractive new replacements, and your kitchen will look brand new. The whole process can often be completed in a single week.
DIY
If you want to do the work on your own, many kitchen remodeling companies sell the doors, drawer fronts, and materials you'll need to reface your own cabinets. The large home improvement stores are also great resources for materials.
At the least difficult level, you can add hardware, moldings, or wood appliques to plain cabinet doors and fronts. Depending on how elaborate you make it, this can simply dress up your old cabinets or change their appearance entirely. Adding a new paint color or multicolor scheme makes this refacing even more effective.
The next option is to buy new doors for your existing cabinets. Replacing an all-too-familiar panel door with a sleek new European-style door—or a plain flush door with a raised-panel style—can effect an amazing transformation. This works best with overlay doors, which cover the stiles and rails and limit the amount of reworking necessary in those areas.
If you want to go the distance and completely reface your old cabinets, you can buy high-quality self-sticking veneers in just about any wood species. Some of these veneers have a peel-off paper backing, and some are applied with heat. Professional cabinet refacers use special heat tools, but an ordinary clothes iron works just as well. After the veneer is on, you stain and finish it the same as you would any other new wood.
By Cam Heffernan
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