Cabinet Painting & Refinishing
A hard, factory-smooth finish on your existing boxes and doors — the look of a new kitchen for a fraction of what replacing the cabinets costs.
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
Kitchens we refinish around Orange County
The best candidates for refinishing are the oak and maple kitchens put in during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s — which is why so many of these jobs land in the developments of Washingtonville, Monroe, Chester and New Windsor, and in the newer colonials around Warwick and Goshen. Older village homes in Montgomery, Walden, Newburgh and Cornwall sometimes have built-in or painted cabinetry that just needs a durable new finish. Rentals and two-families in Middletown and Harriman get the job when an owner wants a better kitchen without a gut, and converted cottages at Greenwood Lake and farm-village houses in Florida round it out. Because we set up spray containment inside your house, kitchens close to the shop in Highland Mills, Central Valley and Woodbury are simply the easiest to schedule.
Cabinet and kitchen projects
What people ask about refinishing cabinets
Refinishing typically costs a fraction of replacement — most homeowners see somewhere in the range of a quarter to a third of a new-cabinet quote, with no counter, backsplash or flooring work required. We break the comparison down in cabinet painting vs. replacing.
Usually three to five working days. You'll be without cabinet doors for most of that, but the boxes stay usable and you keep your counters, sink and appliances the whole time.
Not when the prep is done right. Failures come from grease left on the doors and from skipping the bonding primer. We degrease thoroughly, use the correct primer for the substrate and spray the finish, which produces a harder, more even film than brushing.
Yes. Oak has an open grain that will read through a finish unless it's filled. We can grain-fill before priming for a fully smooth look, or leave the grain visible if you like the texture — it's your call at the estimate.
Spray. Doors and drawer fronts are sprayed flat on both sides off-site or in a contained area; boxes and face frames are sprayed in place with containment. Spraying is what produces the factory-smooth surface people are actually after.
Doors are rehung and usable within a few days, but cabinet coatings continue hardening for two to three weeks. We give you the cure schedule in writing — mostly it means being gentle with door edges and not lining shelves with contact paper for the first couple of weeks.