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.
London kitchens run from golden oak in Oakridge and Westmount to honey maple in Masonville and painted MDF in Summerside, and each one is prepped differently. The quote names the substrate and the primer that goes with it. Where the doors are beyond paint, cabinet refacing and door replacement is the next step up.
Kitchen Cabinet Painting Starts With Degreasing, Not Paint
Every cabinet painting failure traces back to prep. Kitchen doors carry a film of cooking oil, hand oil and furniture polish that no sanding removes and no paint sticks to. Each door is labelled with its position, taken off, and cleaned with a solvent degreaser that lifts wax and grease rather than smearing it.
Next comes sanding until the whole surface carries a uniform dull scratch, filler in any dents or abandoned hardware holes, and then primer. Shellac primer goes onto oak and cherry, because those species bleed tannin. An adhesion primer goes onto melamine, thermofoil and laminate. Maple, poplar and MDF that was painted before need only a regular bonding coat. The primer is sanded too, because kitchen cabinet painting is a stack of thin, flat layers and every one of them is sanded before the next.
Thin Sprayed Coats Are What Separate Cabinet Painting From Wall Painting
Wall paint on cabinets fails. It stays soft, sticks to the frame, and within a year has peeled off the cutlery drawer. Proper cabinet painting relies on a two-part polyurethane, or else a waterborne alkyd enamel, laid down in two or three sprayed coats that are thin enough to flow level and, once cured, hard enough to resist a fingernail.
The booth, with its filtered air and steady humidity, is where the doors get sprayed. Face frames and box ends get sprayed in the kitchen inside a plastic enclosure while the range hood pulls air out. A light sanding between every coat lets each layer bond to the one beneath. The cabinet spray painting page covers the booth and the on-site work in detail.
Start To Finish, Kitchen Cabinet Painting Spans Roughly Two Weeks
Two to three days on site is the usual figure. Day one is removal, masking and prep. Day two is priming and spraying the boxes. The doors are away in the booth for four to six days, being primed, sprayed, sanded and sprayed again, and hardening between coats. The last day is reinstalling, aligning and fitting hardware.
At no point is the kitchen shut down. Sink, stove and fridge keep working, and the doorless boxes serve as open shelving in the meantime. Once rehung, the doors feel dry but are still hardening inside. With a waterborne enamel, ordinary use is fine after about seven days and the film is fully hard after thirty, so treat the first two weeks to soft cloths and gentle closing.
What A Kitchen Cabinet Painting Quote In London Costs
Across Ontario in 2026, a whole kitchen most often lands somewhere from $2,500 up to $5,500. A small kitchen can start near $1,500, while a big or two-tone one climbs past $6,000 and sometimes past $9,000, roughly $130 to $250 for each door. None of those figures is ours. What binds is the written quote, which spells out how many doors and drawers, what they are made of, which primer, which topcoat, how many coats, how many days on site, and the total.
Oak grain fill, an adhesion primer for thermofoil, a third coat for a deep colour, a second colour on the island and hardware drilling each get a line of their own, so no part of a kitchen cabinet painting quote hides inside one lump sum.
Pantries And Laundry Cabinets Are Small Cabinet Painting Jobs With Big Wear
A pantry cabinet takes more traffic than any upper in the kitchen. Its doors open a dozen times a day, its shelves carry weight, and its interior is on view every time it opens. Pantry cabinet painting usually includes the interior and the shelves, which is one of the few places interiors are worth the cost, and its doors travel to the booth in the same batch as the kitchen's.
Laundry and mudroom cabinets take wet coats, boots and detergent. A two-part polyurethane topcoat is the usual recommendation because it hardens in a day and cleans with a damp cloth, and the toe kicks and lower doors, which take the most abuse, receive every coat the rest does.
Old Holes Are Filled Before Cabinet Painting, Not After
A new pull with a different spacing than the old one leaves the old holes showing. They get a two-part wood filler that does not shrink, sanded flush, spot-primed and primed again with the door, so the patch disappears under the sprayed coats. Filling holes after cabinet painting leaves a visible bump and a colour mismatch. Filling them before the primer leaves nothing.
Doors that are keeping the same handles keep their holes, and before cabinet painting starts the hardware is taken off, bagged and labelled with the door so every pull goes back where it came from.
Book A Kitchen Cabinet Painting Visit In London
The visit is free, the quote is written, and a sample door in the chosen colour comes before the first coat. Send the form or call +1 (226) 271-3465, give the address and guess at the door count. Vanities, built-ins and every other cabinet painting service are laid out on the home page.
Kitchen Cabinet Painting Questions
How long are the doors away from the kitchen?
The doors spend four to six days at the booth, being primed, sprayed, sanded and sprayed again. You have people on site for two to three days in all. Sink, stove and fridge keep working, and the doorless boxes serve as open shelving until the doors return.
Why not use wall paint on kitchen cabinets?
Wall paint stays soft, sticks to the frame and peels off the cutlery drawer within a year. Cabinets need a two-part polyurethane or a waterborne alkyd enamel, sprayed in two or three thin coats with a sanding between each, so the film cures hard enough to resist a fingernail.
Which primer goes on which cabinets?
Shellac primer goes onto oak and cherry, because they bleed tannin. An adhesion primer goes onto melamine, thermofoil and laminate. Maple, poplar and previously painted MDF need only a regular bonding coat. Every primer coat is sanded before the next layer goes on.