Cabinet Painting & Refinishing

Cabinet refinishing is the highest-value job in residential painting. Replacing the cabinets in an average Orange County kitchen is a five-figure project that takes weeks and tears the room apart. Refinishing the same cabinets gives you a dramatically different kitchen in under a week, at a small fraction of the cost, without touching your counters, backsplash or floors.

It is also the job where technique matters most. Cabinets get touched, wiped, splashed and slammed every single day. A cabinet finish that was brushed on over a light sanding will chip at the door edges within a year. Ours are degreased, sanded, bonded with the correct primer and sprayed in coats — which is why they hold.

How cabinet refinishing works

Doors, drawer fronts and hardware come off and get labeled so every piece returns to the opening it came from. We set up a spray area with containment so the rest of your house isn't touched.

Everything is then degreased — genuinely degreased, with a proper cleaner, not wiped with a damp rag. Years of cooking oil in the film on the doors around a range is the number one cause of cabinet finish failure, and it is invisible until the paint peels.

Next comes sanding to break the existing sheen, filling of any grain, dents or old hardware holes you want gone, and a bonding primer chosen for what the cabinets actually are — raw wood, factory-finished maple, thermofoil or laminate each need a different approach.

Finish coats are sprayed, not brushed. Boxes and face frames are sprayed in place inside the containment; doors and drawer fronts are sprayed flat on both sides so there's no sag or brush texture. The result is an even, hard film with no visible stroke marks.

Hardware goes back on, doors are rehung and adjusted so they sit square, and you get the cure schedule in writing — cabinet coatings are handleable in days but reach full hardness over two to three weeks, and knowing that is the difference between a finish that lasts and one that gets marked in week one.

What we can and can't refinish

Excellent candidates: solid wood doors and face frames, oak and maple cabinets from the 1980s–2000s, painted cabinets that have simply gone dingy or dated, and MDF or plywood boxes in sound structural condition. If the boxes are solid and the doors close properly, refinishing almost always makes more sense than replacement.

Possible with the right prep: thermofoil and laminate doors. These need a specific bonding primer and are unforgiving of shortcuts, but they can be done well. Peeling thermofoil is a different story — once the foil has lifted from the substrate, coating it won't stick it back down.

Not worth it: cabinets with water-damaged, swollen or delaminating boxes, or frames that are no longer square. If the carcass has failed, you're paying us to put a beautiful finish on something that needs to come out. We'll say so at the estimate rather than take the job.

Beyond the kitchen

The same process applies to bathroom vanities, mudroom and laundry cabinetry, built-in bookcases and entertainment centers, and kitchen islands finished as an accent in a contrasting color. A two-tone kitchen — lighter uppers with a deeper color on the island or base cabinets — is one of the most requested looks we do and costs no more than a single color.

Ask about pairing cabinet work with interior painting of the kitchen walls and ceiling in the same visit. Doing both together is significantly cheaper than two separate mobilizations, and it means the whole room finishes at once.

What's included

• Doors, drawer fronts and hardware removed and labeled by opening
• Full degreasing — the step that determines whether the finish holds
• Sanding to break sheen; grain, dents and old hardware holes filled
• Bonding primer matched to wood, thermofoil or laminate
• Sprayed finish coats — no brush marks, no roller texture
• Containment so overspray never leaves the work area
• Hardware reinstalled, doors rehung and adjusted square
• Written cure schedule so the new finish isn't damaged in week one

Where we work

We provide cabinet painting & refinishing throughout Orange County, New York — including Highland Mills, Monroe, Central Valley, Woodbury, Harriman, Chester, Warwick, Greenwood Lake, Goshen, Middletown, Newburgh, New Windsor, Cornwall & Cornwall-on-Hudson, Washingtonville, Montgomery, Walden, Florida, NY. Based in Highland Mills, most of our work is within a short drive, which means estimates get scheduled quickly and callbacks actually happen.