Refinishing suits cabinets built from wood too good to hide. Stripping or sanding removes the tired old finish, a new stain goes on if a different colour is wanted, and a hard clear coat locks the grain in.
Cherry kitchens in Masonville and Sunningdale, walnut in the century homes of Old North, and white oak in newer builds off Colonel Talbot Road are the London kitchens most often refinished rather than painted. Where the doors have a builder-grade veneer that is lifting, refacing is the better route.
A solid cherry or walnut door that has gone dull, scratched around the handles and darker near the stove does not need paint. It needs its old lacquer taken back, the wood cleaned up and a fresh clear coat that is harder than the one it was born with. The colour can stay, go lighter or go darker, and the grain that cost the first owner a premium stays visible.
Cabinet painting wins when the wood is oak with a dated orange stain, when the doors are a mix of species, or when the kitchen has been painted before. Cabinet refinishing wins when the species is worth showing. The visit settles it, and we will say which one the kitchen wants even when it is the cheaper answer.
Two routes reach bare wood, and neither is cabinet painting prep, because stain forgives nothing. Sanding works when the old finish is thin and the doors are flat or simply profiled, and it is the faster, cleaner route. Stripping with a chemical remover is used on raised-panel doors with deep grooves, on thick old varnish and on any door where sanding would cut through a veneer. Either way, doors head to the shop while boxes get finished in place inside containment, exactly as they would for cabinet painting.
Once bare, the wood gets sanded up through the grits until the surface is uniform, because stain shows every scratch that paint would hide. Maple and cherry are blotch-prone under stain, so a conditioner goes on before the colour.
The stain is picked on one of the kitchen's own doors, never from a chip. A cherry kitchen can go a shade deeper, a honey maple kitchen can move to a warm mid-brown, and a white oak kitchen can take a pale natural finish that reads current. Over the stain goes a two-part waterborne polyurethane clear coat, applied thin by spray gun with a scuff between passes, the same clear finish used on wood islands in a two-tone kitchen.
That clear coat is the same family of product used for cabinet painting, harder than the factory lacquer on most 1990s and 2000s kitchens, and it does not yellow the way a solvent varnish does over a south-facing window.
Refinishing lands in the same market ranges as cabinet painting, which in Ontario for 2026 means most kitchens between $2,500 and $5,500, with stripping raised-panel doors adding to the low end. Refacing runs $3,000 to $10,000 and replacement $15,000 to $40,000 or more. Those figures describe the market, and the price for your kitchen arrives in writing after the visit.
When the wood is sound but the finish is worn, refinishing may be the better answer than cabinet painting, so request a visit or call +1 (226) 271-3465 and bring a drawer front to the door. The London Cabinet Painting home page explains how refinishing sits beside cabinet painting and every other service we run.
Whatever the cabinet, vanity, pantry, island or built-in, the prep, primer and sprayed enamel match what the kitchen received.
Kitchen cabinet painting keeps the kitchen you have: doors, drawer fronts and boxes are each prepped to suit their material, then sprayed with a hard enamel in a fresh colour, for far less than replacing anything.
See Kitchen Cabinets
A spray gun lays hard enamel onto cabinet doors in thin, even passes that a brush cannot match, leaving a factory-smooth surface with no ridges, stroke marks or drips where grease can gather or chips can start.
See Spray Painting
Golden oak from the 1980s becomes a current painted kitchen through oak cabinet painting: tannins get sealed under a shellac primer, the open grain gets filled or stays on show, and a hard sprayed enamel goes over top.
See Oak Cabinets
Slick factory surfaces such as thermofoil, melamine and laminate shed ordinary paint, so this kind of cabinet painting starts with an adhesion primer that grips them, followed by a sprayed enamel topcoat that holds for years.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
Refacing hangs brand-new doors and drawer fronts on cabinet boxes still worth keeping, or replaces a lone damaged door, after which every piece is sprayed at once so the whole kitchen reads as one matched set.
See Refacing and New Doors
A two-tone kitchen sets a light painted perimeter against an island done in stained wood, charcoal, green or navy, and the island can be done as part of the whole kitchen or sprayed by itself as its own small job.
See Two-Tone and Islands
Condo kitchen cabinet painting suits a galley with somewhere between ten and fifteen doors, respects the building's rules on hours, elevators and parking, and sends the doors away to the booth so the suite remains livable while the work is done.
See Condo Kitchens
Painting a bathroom vanity takes a day or two: its doors, drawer fronts and box get the full kitchen prep and a sprayed enamel that tolerates steam, at a fraction of a kitchen's size and price.
See Bathroom Vanities
Rental property cabinet painting gives landlords a durable, sprayed, wipe-clean kitchen finish between tenants, priced per unit and scheduled around move-out dates, with hardware and hinge fixes done at the same visit.
See Rental Properties
Tall pantries, laundry and mudroom cabinets, wall units, bookcases and fireplace mantels are built into the house, so instead of going to a booth they get sprayed in position behind sealed plastic, using the same hard enamel a kitchen gets.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Hardware and hinge work rides along with a painted kitchen: abandoned handle holes get filled and sanded smooth, a drilling template places the new ones, soft-close hinges replace the tired originals, and the metal finish is picked to suit the colour.
See Hardware and Hinges
Colour and sheen get settled before any cabinet painting begins, on full-size sample doors sprayed in the actual product and left standing in the actual kitchen, with the colour matched from whichever paint deck the owner prefers.
See Colour ConsultationSomeone comes out, counts doors, checks the material and writes up the quote. There is no fee for the visit and nothing to sign.
Give us whatever you know about the kitchen, and a call comes back to arrange a time. A name plus a phone number gets the form through. To skip the form and talk it over, call +1 (226) 271-3465.
