When is refinishing the right call?
If the boxes are sound, refinishing is almost always the better answer. Cabinet carcasses outlive their finish by decades — what has aged is the colour, the sheen and the grease film around the handles.
Replace when the boxes are water-damaged, when the layout is wrong, or when the doors are a material that will not hold a coating. We will tell you which case you are in at the estimate, including when the honest answer is that refinishing is not worth doing.
What does the process actually involve?
The work is in the preparation, and the finish is only as good as the degreasing underneath it. Skipping that first step is why a badly refinished kitchen starts peeling at the handles within a year.
- Doors and drawer fronts removed, labelled and finished off-site or in a controlled space
- Degrease everything — kitchen grease is invisible and no coating bonds through it
- Sand to a mechanical key, fill any grain or damage
- Bonding primer suited to the substrate: laminate, thermofoil and raw wood each need a different one
- Two finish coats, sprayed rather than brushed, for a surface with no brush marks
- Rehang, adjust hinges, replace the hardware if you are changing it
How long is the kitchen out of use?
Three to five days for a typical kitchen, and the kitchen stays usable for most of it. Doors come off on day one and go back on at the end; the boxes are coated in place while you can still reach the shelves.
Cure is a separate question from dry. The finish is dry to touch within hours and handles normally within a day, but give it two weeks before you stack heavy things against a painted surface or the finish will mark.
How long until the kitchen is properly back to normal?
Dry and usable is not the same as cured, and the gap is where most refinished kitchens get damaged. The finish is dry to touch in 2 to 4 hours and doors are rehung at the end of the job, but a waterborne alkyd keeps hardening for about 14 days.
So: use the kitchen normally from day one, but for the first 2 weeks do not stack heavy pans against a painted door, do not stick shelf liner to a fresh interior, and do not leave a wet cloth lying on a painted surface. After that it behaves like a factory finish.
- Day 1 — doors off, degrease, sand, mask
- Days 2 to 3 — prime and spray the boxes in place
- Days 3 to 5 — doors sprayed, cured, rehung and adjusted
- Day 5 to day 19 — normal use, light care while it cures