We take your doors and drawer fronts down, clean off the grease, sand them, prime them for their material and spray a hard enamel before hanging them again. Kitchen cabinet painting recolours the entire room while your counters, tile and sink stay untouched.
No two Meadowvale kitchens start from the same place. A dark 1970s kitchen in a backsplit off Montevideo Road, a golden oak kitchen in a 1980s house by Lake Aquitaine and a white builder kitchen in a 2000s Lisgar home each need a different first step. That is the reason we come and look before we give a cabinet painting price.
We write down how many doors, drawer fronts and cabinet boxes the kitchen has. Those three numbers drive the price, so they sit at the top of every cabinet painting quote we hand over.
Under the counts, we list what the doors are made of, which primer we will use, which enamel goes on top, the sheen you picked and how many coats you get. Painting the insides of the cabinets is its own line, since it nearly doubles the surface we spray. Crown moulding, glass-front doors, patching holes from old knobs and new pulls are listed one by one. Extra work never shows up on the bill unless you signed a written change first.
The order of the steps is what keeps paint on a cabinet. On the first day we take the doors, drawer fronts and hinges off, label each piece and bag the hinges by location. A few photos record where everything goes.
Cleaning comes second. A kitchen in Meadowvale that has cooked family dinners since the 1970s has a greasy layer on the frames that soap and water will not lift, so we use a solvent degreaser. After that we patch dents and old holes, sand every surface dull and put on the primer that fits: shellac on oak and dark stain, bonding primer on melamine and thermofoil.
The colour goes on in two or three light sprayed coats, sanded lightly between each. Doors get theirs in our booth. Frames and boxes get theirs in your kitchen behind taped plastic. Read more about how we spray cabinets if you want the detail.
Expect us on site two or three days for most kitchen cabinet painting jobs. Once the doors return from the booth, the whole project usually wraps up inside two weeks.
Your fridge, sink and stove stay connected the whole time. Plates and glasses sit on the bare shelves until the doors return. The one day that feels cramped is the day we spray the boxes.
Paint that feels dry is still soft underneath. Waterborne enamel wants a week of light use and keeps getting harder for about a month. Two-part polyurethane gets hard much sooner. We tell you which product your cabinet painting uses and how gently to treat it at first.
A full kitchen in this market usually costs $2,500 to $5,500. A small kitchen can start around $1,500. Larger rooms and two-shade layouts may cost $6,000 to $9,000. Counted by the door, cabinet painting works out to about $130 to $250.
By comparison, fresh doors on the boxes you own generally cost $3,000 to $10,000, while an all-new kitchen opens around $15,000 and can exceed $40,000. Grain filling on oak and bonding primer on slick doors each nudge a cabinet painting price upward. Treat these as market ranges, because what you pay is set by your own quote.
Peeling almost always comes from one of four shortcuts: primer over grease, skipping the sanding, choosing the wrong primer, or rolling wall paint onto doors. Wall paint never gets truly hard, and cabinet doors are handled far too often for a soft film.
The first wear appears around the handles and on your busiest drawer. Several thin sprayed layers stand up to that far better than one heavy brushed layer. A hairline at a panel joint in mid-winter is dry furnace air shrinking the wood, and it does not mean the cabinet painting has failed.
Plan on about forty minutes, at no cost. We count every piece, identify the material, study the most worn door and leave a written cabinet painting quote behind. Phone +1 (289) 206-9922 or fill in the contact form. Owners of older kitchens should also read our 1970s and 1980s kitchen page, and every other service is listed on our home page.
Backsplit bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudroom lockers and rec room bars get the coatings we trust in kitchens.
Dark stain, slab doors with routed grooves and printed wood-grain fronts all accept new colour once the grease and old gloss are gone. On a kitchen this age, cabinet painting is mostly careful prep, and that prep decides how long the finish lasts.
See 70s and 80s Kitchens
Oak brings two problems to the job that maple and MDF do not. Tannin in the wood stains through water-based primer, and deep grain lines show through cabinet painting unless they are filled flat first.
See Oak Cabinets
Some cabinets have wood that deserves to be seen. Refinishing takes the worn finish off, evens out the colour with new stain and seals it with a sprayed clear coat, so the grain stays in view instead of disappearing under paint.
See Refinishing
Spraying puts the coating on as a fine mist that levels itself before it dries, so there are no brush lines left behind. With a sprayer, cabinet painting comes out looking like it left a factory, not a hobby bench.
See Spray Painting
Melamine, laminate and thermofoil are slick by design, so cabinet painting on them depends on a bonding primer built to grip plastic surfaces. Sound doors finish beautifully, while vinyl already curling away from its board is past saving.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
With refacing, fresh doors and drawer fronts are hung on your current cabinet boxes and the frames are finished to suit. If just one door is ruined, we swap that one out and spray it with the others during cabinet painting so nobody can tell.
See Refacing and New Doors
Soft white or greige on top with sage, navy or charcoal below is the combination we are asked about most, and the island usually gets the darker shade. Painting an island by itself also counts as a full cabinet painting job.
See Two-Tone and Islands
A single vanity needs a day or two of our time, which makes it the least disruptive cabinet painting job we offer. Its doors travel to our booth, we spray the base where it sits, and the bathroom is ready again soon after.
See Bathroom Vanities
Most condo kitchens hold between ten and twenty doors, which means the spraying is quick once building approvals are in place. Cabinet painting in a condo townhouse or apartment runs smoothly only when parking, work hours and smell are planned ahead.
See Condo Kitchens
Laundry uppers, pantry cupboards, bench-and-locker units by the garage door, bookcases and fireplace built-ins all go through the primer and sprayed enamel your kitchen gets. Because nearly all of them are attached to the house, cabinet painting for these rooms happens on site behind plastic.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Leftover knob holes get plugged and filled flush, and every new pull is bored through a jig so the whole row sits straight. Tired hinges get replaced during the same window, since cabinet painting already has the doors off.
See Hardware and Hinges
Meadowvale kitchens we quote mostly end up in one of six shades: sage, greige, cream, warm white, charcoal or navy. A little paper chip under store lights cannot show how any of them behaves in your room, so one of your own doors gets sprayed in the shade you like and propped up in the kitchen before any cabinet painting goes on the calendar.
See Colour ConsultationWe drop by, count doors and drawers, check the wood or board underneath and spell out the work in a written quote. No charge for any of it.
Jot down anything you know about the cupboards, and we will call to choose a day. A name and a number are all it takes. Want to talk right now? Call +1 (289) 206-9922.
