Anyone have their cabinets refaced?

[katie111]

We just bought a ski vacation condo. It's in great shape and we got an awesome deal on it but the kitchen cabinets are so ugly. They are that white laminate with a strip of oak near the top that was somehow popular in the 80's. We definitely don't want to do a remodel as the layout is fine & the kitchen is quite small (galley style) so we are thinking of just refacing the cabinets. They are actually very solid, just ugly.

If you did reface, how do they look? Have they stood up well? We would definitely have it professionally done as we are not the least bit handy and we would want to do real wood, not laminate. Any ideas on cost? We only have about 10 cabinets and 5 drawers in the entire kitchen. I would love to do dark wood, but the insides are white, so would that look really strange? We have white cabinets in our home kichen, so I'd like to do something different and a little warmer looking.

 

[CoP Luv]

We had ours done two years ago and they look like brand new cabinets! Our old ones came with our house and were perfectly fine construction wise, but the color was awful. I am glad we finally did the change!

I don't know the cost of the refacing part, because we also got an island and new pantry cabinet installed as well. You cannot even tell that the cabinets were refaced at all. The new doors make all the difference and our kitchen looks brand new!

 

[wendow]

We have some good friends who did it and were very pleased with the results. Theirs cost 15k but they had a large kitchen. Yours should cost much, much less I am thinking. I would think you would be able to get some free quotes.

 

[holden]

My MIL got a quote from Home Depot. The cost of resurfacing was very close to the cost of getting the cabinets replaced. She chose to just replace.

I think it's definitely worth it to get a free quote.

 

[AntFarm]

What is refacing? Is it just getting new cabinet doors?

 

[Jules123]

I just had my cabinets refaced. I had 19 cabinet doors and 9 drawers done. They look fabulous - like brand new cabinets. I had them done by a local woodworker and he only charged me a little less than $1000 to have them done.

 

[Marie17]

Kudos to getting it done by a local woodworker. I need to find out if we have someone available in my area that does this.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We had our master bathroom and kitchen cabinets refaced. Did the master first to see how it would turn out and if the guy did a good job. Did a cherry finish but not a real dark one. We were lucky, found a reliable person who showed up and did a good job. That's half the battle. If I recall recorrectly, it cost us about $5000 to do our kitchen which is on the small side. I have a lot of cabinets (large ones), about 15 plus and about 9 drawers or so. Also did the kitchen in cherry. I think we did this about 5 or 6 years ago. I had the same guy to our house recently to give price for two large cabinets in laundry room and the cabinet "thing" in our hallway which has one cabinet up and one cabinet down and you can put pictures and stuff there, he quoted $1800 for that but decided to wait on that.

 

[auralia]

We had ours done. The seams in it are a bit noticable, but I am a nit picker too. It looks MUCH better than what was there. for 4500$ we got all our appliances installed (we bought them seperatly), had our cabinets over the stove altered to allow a microwave, had a custom island built, and got new HD laminate counter tops. The price also included putting the sink back in and running a water line to the fridge, install fridge, over stove range, dish washer and stove including new outlet for the stove.

If I had an ikea store near by and I were you i'd just do it myself with Ikea. We replaced all the cabinets in our laundry room (very similar to a small galley kitchen) for 1000$ when we did it ourselves. I would pay someone to do the counter, but do the cabinets myself in a kitchen of the size you are talking about.