Kitchen Cabinet Resurfacing May Be All You Need
Kitchen renovation can certainly be expensive. Start with the cost of new cabinets, which surprises most people at first, then we have to add in countertops, appliances, and all the other bits and pieces that go into remodeled kitchens. However, if the cabinets in your current kitchen are structurally sound, why replace them? Consider kitchen cabinet resurfacing. If your current layout is functional, and you're not planning to relocate your major appliances, then what you'd be doing is throwing away perfectly good cabinets to put expensive new ones in the same place. Not very cost effective, huh? You may find it hard to believe that your old cabinets can be made to look like new, but cabinet resurfacing, also referred to as cabinet refacing and cabinet door replacement, can make a remarkeable difference. Once the old doors and drawer fronts are removed, the old cabinets can be cleaned up, primed, and then painted. When the new doors are added, the cabinets usually look brand new.
While there are many commercial firms that specialize in cabinet resurfacing, if you have basic diy skills you can certainly make a do it yourself job out of this. There are companies that will make the new doors and drawer fronts for you. You remove the old ones, measure each one separately, and bring or send the measurements to the door company. They will have a selection of materials and colors you can choose from, and you can usually change the type of hinge if you'd like to go from visible to hidden european type hinges, or vice versa. While the new doors are being manufactured, you can clean the old cabinets, sand them if necessary, then prime and paint. By the time the new doors are ready, the paint should be cured and the cabinets ready for their new look. So far I've mainly focused on the cost savings of cabinetrefacing. However, time savings is another advantage, in that if you do it yourself, the kitchen can probably be used during the work, or during most of it, anyway. If you hire a contractor, you may lose the kitchen for a day or two, but the job will go much faster than a complete remodel. And whether you do the kitchen cabinet resurfacing yourself or hire someone to handle it for you, there's nothing that says it's an all or nothing proposition. You could reface most of the cabinets while replacing one or two with brand new units. Perhaps you'd like to remove a couple of regular cabinets and replace them with drawers, which can be much more efficient storage, depending on what you use them for. Entirely possible. Even if you decide to have someone else do the entire job, you will still save big money compared to installing new cabinets. Additionally, there may be a health benefit for you and your family in going with kitchen cabinet resurfacing. New cabinet boxes are usually constructed of particleboard (less frequently plywood) which is glued together with formaldehyde glue. The formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, and has been shown to outgass from the wood into the air over time. The old cabinets probably did contain formaldehyde when new, but chances are that it has all already outgassed and dissipated. So if your new doors are solid wood, and you use a low or no VOC paint, which is becoming widely available, you'll probably have much healthier air in your new kitchen with a brand new look to boot! |
