Cabinet Painting Questions From London Homeowners

Door and drawer count first, then substrate, colour and extras. Oak adds grain fill and a shellac primer, thermofoil and melamine add a bonding primer, a deep navy or green adds a third coat, and an island in a second colour, crown moulding, interiors and hardware drilling are each their own line. Across Ontario this year most kitchens fall somewhere from $2,500 to $5,500, but the figure that counts is the one written down after the free visit.

Yes, by a wide margin. Across the Ontario market, cabinet painting on a typical kitchen costs $2,500 to $5,500, refacing $3,000 to $10,000, and a brand-new kitchen $15,000 to $40,000 or more. Cabinet painting keeps both boxes and doors, refacing keeps the boxes but buys new doors, and replacement throws everything out.

It is. Insurance is in place for every kitchen, condo, rental and vanity we take on, and the paperwork can be provided to a condo corporation or property manager before the job starts.

They do, and the reason is film thickness and evenness. A brush leaves ridges that are thin at the edges and thick in the middle, and the thin spots chip first. Spraying lays down thin, even coats that level flat and cure into one hard shell. Sprayed cabinet painting also has no brush marks to collect grease.

Two families. A waterborne alkyd enamel, which is a hard-curing, low-VOC cabinet paint that is ready for everyday use after roughly seven days, and a two-part waterborne polyurethane, the paint-and-hardener system used on factory kitchens, which hardens in a day and resists wear and cleaners better. The quote names which one goes on and why.

Both. Pulls that are staying get bagged and labelled by door and go back on. Pulls that are changing leave holes that get filled and sanded ahead of the primer so no patch shows, and a template guides the new holes once the finish is cured. Soft-close hinges can go in during the same visit.

Yes, with grain fill. A water-based grain filler gets worked into the pores in a few passes, dried and sanded flat before the primer, and the door reads as smooth painted wood. Without the filler, the oak grain shows through as a fine texture, which some owners prefer and which costs less. Both start with a shellac primer to stop the tannins bleeding through.

The peeling ones cannot. Paint will not glue lifted vinyl back onto the MDF underneath, and the heat that lifted it will keep lifting it. Those doors are stripped back to the MDF and sealed, or swapped for a fresh door of matching profile, and then painted with the rest. The intact doors take cabinet painting over a bonding primer without any trouble.

Yes. Painting only the island takes a day or two, with its doors sent to the booth and its box sprayed where it sits, and no other single piece gets requested more often. Navy, forest green and charcoal are what most owners pick to sit beside white or greige perimeter cabinets.

The kitchen keeps working the whole time, because the sink, stove and fridge are never disconnected and the doorless boxes double as shelving. After the doors return, a waterborne enamel asks for two gentle weeks and takes about thirty days to harden completely. Two-part polyurethane can be used as normal within a day or two.

The doors are sprayed off site in a ventilated booth, so most of the spraying never happens in the house. Box spraying happens on site inside sealed plastic, with an exhaust fan ducted out a window, using low-VOC waterborne products. There is a paint smell for the day of the on-site work and little after, and the house stays occupied throughout.

A fine line can open where the centre panel meets the frame on a solid-wood door in February and close again in July. London houses run dry in furnace season and humid in summer, and the wood moves with it. That is the wood, not the paint, and a flexible waterborne enamel or two-part polyurethane handles it far better than a brittle lacquer. It is explained before the job starts.