Joe the owner is a pleasure to work with. The quoting process is meticulous and he helped me devise solutions and help me update the condo's look while keeping costs reasonable. Any issues from walkthrough is quickly addressed and Brayan from Joe's crew did a good job painting the various parts of the apartment. Will definitely work with them again and recommend Fulton Revival to anyone looking at painting jobs. Give them a call!
Gold Coast · Chicagoland
Cabinet Painting in Gold Coast
Premium cabinet painting for Gold Coast mansions and luxury towers. Bold color or muted heritage, finished in-house, sprayed factory-smooth. Founder-led since 2012. Get your estimate.
This is the neighborhood that is brave enough to go bold. We are the crew steady enough to pull it off.
Founder-led since 2012, we bring factory-smooth, sprayed cabinet painting to the Gold Coast's historic mansions and luxury towers alike. Muted heritage tones for a hundred-year-old room, or a confident, saturated color that turns a developer kitchen into something with a point of view. Designed to the architecture, finished in our own Chicago shop, installed by the crew that has done it more than 1,500 times.
The one neighborhood in Chicago that paints with nerve
Most of Chicago wants a safe white kitchen, and we paint plenty of those beautifully. The Gold Coast is the exception. This is the most affluent square mile in the city, second in the country by most accounts only to Manhattan's Upper East Side, and the people here have lived alongside real design their whole lives. They have walked Oak Street past Hermes and Brunello Cucinelli, they collect art, they know the difference between a timid color and a deliberate one. So when a Gold Coast kitchen gets painted, it is often the one place in town where the homeowner actually wants us to go bold.
The mansions and the towers ask for it differently. Inside a restored Georgian Revival or Queen Anne on the Astor Street corridor, the brave choice might be a muted heritage tone, a deep historical green or a smoky blue from the Farrow and Ball and Benjamin Moore historical palettes, that honors a room the architecture always intended to wear color. Forty floors up in a tower along Lake Shore Drive, the brave choice is the opposite: a saturated, confident color that finally separates a building-spec kitchen from every other unit on the line. Either way, color is the actual problem we are solving. We are the trusted color choice, not the trusted no-chipping choice, and the Gold Coast is where that distinction matters most.
And because cabinet painting keeps your existing doors and boxes exactly where they are, the bold move never requires a gut remodel. Same layout, same footprint, brand new looking cabinets in a color that finally matches the people living in the room.
How a Gold Coast painting project actually goes
It starts at your Cabinet Design Consultation. We come to you, whether that is a mansion east of State Street or a high-floor condo, read the room against its architecture, and bring real finished samples right to your island, never photos-only guesswork. This is the conversation where the color gets brave. We color-match in any Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, Farrow and Ball, and more, and we will show you the marriage of a tone and the right hardware before a single door comes off.
From there the work happens cleanly. We encapsulate the kitchen behind a plastic bubble with a negative pressure machine venting dust away, so a mansion's millwork and a tower's corridors stay spotless. Your doors and drawer fronts come back to our controlled Pilsen shop, where we spray them, boxes and all, building the finish thin in multiple coats to a flawless factory-smooth result. Nothing is left as-is and hoped to land close. Then we reinstall, set the hardware, and the room is yours again, every project backed by the Fulton Revivals warranty, start to finish.
In a luxury tower we book the freight elevator, keep a certificate of insurance on file with building management, respect the loading-dock window, and leave the common areas exactly as we found them.
Link: See our full cabinet painting process → /services/cabinet-painting/process/
Link: More on cabinet painting → /services/cabinet-painting/
In their own words
What homeowners say after the reveal
Joe and his team at Fulton Revivals were excellent and we are extremely pleased with the interior paint work done throughout our condo. They were professional and timely - communicating to us throughout the project. Joe had the team out quickly after project completion to address minor touch-ups post walk-through. Highly recommend and will utilize Fulton Revivals services for future work.
We recently had our kitchen cabinets refinished by Fulton Revivals. Working with Joe and Krystal was amazing and we couldn’t be happier with the results! They were professional, reliable, and went above and beyond to make sure everything was perfect. Our cabinets look absolutely beautiful — it’s like we have a brand new kitchen! Their attention to detail and pride in their work truly show. We highly recommend them to anyone looking for quality craftsmanship and outstanding service.
Gold Coast questions
Questions we hear most
- How much does cabinet painting cost in Chicago?
- Most cabinet painting runs $150 to $250 per door and drawer front, so the size of your kitchen is the biggest driver of the total. Where you land in that range depends on the condition of your cabinets, the hinge style and overlay, and any repairs like water or impact damage. We price every job down to the penny off our production rates instead of guessing, so the number reflects your actual kitchen. For a full breakdown, see our cost guide.
- How long does cabinet painting take?
- About 5 to 10 working days start to finish. We finish the boxes in your home (usually 2 to 4 days for a typical kitchen), spray the doors and drawer fronts at our shop (3 to 5 days), then come back for a final reinstall day.
- Do you spray or brush the cabinets?
- We spray, always. Every door and drawer front is sprayed in our shop, not brushed or rolled, so the finish lays down dead smooth with no brushstrokes or stipple. That is what makes a sprayed cabinet read like a factory finish instead of a repaint.
- Will painted cabinets chip or peel?
- Not when the prep is done right, which is where most cabinet paint jobs fail. We clean every surface with ammonia and TSP, sand the entire set, lay down a primer made specifically for wood coatings, sand again, then build the finish in multiple, multiple thin coats. The chipping people have seen usually comes from cheap latex enamels brushed over a dirty, unsanded cabinet. We use 2K polys, so we don't have that problem.
- Do you paint the cabinet boxes too, or just the doors?
- Both, so your whole kitchen matches. We finish the boxes and face frames in your home and spray the doors and drawer fronts at our shop, then bring everything back together on reinstall day.
- Where do you paint the doors?
- At our shop, not in your kitchen. A controlled shop environment is how you get a clean, even, factory-quality finish, and it keeps the spraying, dust, and dry time out of your home. The boxes are done on-site, the doors and fronts come to us.
- What kind of paint and finish do you use on cabinets?
- We finish cabinets with an Italian two-component (2K) polyurethane built specifically for cabinetry, laid down in multiple thin coats over a primer made for wood coatings. It cures far harder than the latex enamels most painters use, which is why it holds up to daily kitchen wear. We can match every color.
- Can you paint over stained or wood cabinets?
- Yes. Oak, cherry, maple, birch, alder, laminate, and veneer all take paint well once they're properly cleaned, sanded, and primed, and open-grain woods like oak get extra prep so the grain doesn't show through the final finish. The few things we won't paint are thermofoil and certain vinyls, because nothing holds to them long-term and we won't set you up for a finish that fails.
- What colors work best for kitchen cabinets?
- Crisp whites and warm off-whites stay timeless, while greens, deep navies, and two-tone kitchens with a contrasting island are where a lot of our design-minded clients are going right now. The right answer depends on your counters, backsplash, floors, and light, which is why we pair sizable projects with a designer in The Curated Design Session so you commit with confidence, not on a hunch.
- Is cabinet painting worth it vs. replacing?
- For most kitchens, yes. If your cabinet boxes are solid, painting gives you a brand-new look for a fraction of the cost of new cabinets, with far less demolition and disruption. Replacement only makes sense when the boxes themselves are failing. If you want a new door style but solid boxes, refacing is the middle path worth comparing.
- Is cabinet painting the same as "cupboard painting"?
- Same service, different word. "Cupboard painting" is just the more British or informal name for what we do, refinishing your kitchen cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and boxes with a sprayed, durable finish. If you searched "cupboard painters," you're in the right place.
- Can you repaint cabinets that were already painted?
- Yes. We run the same process no matter what's on the cabinets now: we clean the full set, sand it down, prime, and paint. That way the new finish bonds to a stable, properly prepped surface instead of just layering over an old finish that may already be failing.
- How long do professionally painted cabinets last?
- Done right, a professionally painted cabinet finish lasts many years of daily kitchen use. The key is the system underneath: thorough prep, the right primer, and multiple thin coats of a hard two-component coating that cures far tougher than ordinary wall paint. That's what separates a finish that holds for years from a repaint that chips in months.
- Will the finish show brushstrokes, or is it smooth like a factory cabinet?
- Smooth, like a factory cabinet. Because we spray every door and drawer front in our shop rather than brush or roll them, the finish lays down dead even with no brushstrokes, ridges, or stipple. That sprayed, factory-grade smoothness is one of the biggest tells between professional cabinet work and a DIY or general-painter repaint.
- How do I clean and care for my painted cabinets?
- Easy. Wipe them with a soft, damp cloth and a mild dish soap when needed, and skip abrasive pads and harsh or ammonia-based cleaners that dull any finish over time. We hand you touch-up paint when we're done for the occasional nick, and the cured finish is built to take normal daily kitchen life.
- Do white painted cabinets turn yellow over time?
- Not with the right products. Yellowing is a known problem with cheaper oil-based finishes, which is exactly why we don't use them on white cabinets. The two-component coatings we spray are formulated to stay color-stable, so your whites hold true instead of ambering. It's another reason the product underneath matters as much as the color on top.
- Can you touch up a chip or scratch later, or does the whole door need repainting?
- Most small chips and scratches touch up cleanly, which is why we leave you matching touch-up paint when we finish. For everyday nicks you won't need to redo a whole door. If a door ever takes major damage, we can refinish that single door rather than the whole kitchen.
- Can you paint the cabinets around my sink and dishwasher where it gets wet?
- Yes, and those high-moisture zones are exactly where proper prep and the right coating earn their keep. We make sure those areas are cleaned, sealed, and finished to stand up to water and steam. If there's existing water damage to the cabinet itself, like swollen MDF under the sink, we repair that first, then finish, so it looks and holds up like the rest.
Ready when you are
