★★★★★ 5.0 on Google · 125 reviews · 250+ five-star reviews across all platforms · 1,500+ kitchens revived since 2012
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Now Offering: Interior Painting & Exterior Painting

Gold Coast · Chicagoland

Cabinet Refacing in Gold Coast

Cabinet refacing for Gold Coast luxury towers and mansion kitchens. Keep your good boxes, get current premium door styles in white oak or walnut, finished in-house. Founder-led since 2012. Get your estimate.

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5.0 on Google125+ reviews
250+ Five-Staracross all platforms
Est. 2012Founder-led

Your tower kitchen has good bones. It just stopped looking like the rest of your renovated home.

Founder-led since 2012, we reface Gold Coast kitchens by keeping your solid boxes and replacing the doors and drawer fronts in the premium styles people actually want now, Shaker, Artesia, Mini Shaker, Flat Panel, Adobe, Asher, or Connecticut, in white oak, walnut, maple, or paint-grade. Built to a standard that belongs next to a Sub-Zero and marble, finished in our own Chicago shop so the whole kitchen reads as one piece.

A perfect candidate for refacing sits in half the towers on the lake

The Gold Coast splits cleanly into two worlds, and refacing is the answer for one of them in particular. Along Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue stand the full-amenity luxury towers, the Carlyle, the Whitney, the Park Tower, 1300 Lake Shore Drive, and inside a great many of them are kitchens built in the 1980s and 1990s with dark stained oak. The boxes are genuinely good. The layout works for the floor plan. The owner has often lived with it for a decade or two and has no appetite for a gut remodel forty floors up, with the freight-elevator demolition, the dust, and the months of displacement that come with one. That is the textbook profile for refacing, and the neighborhood is full of it.

The mansions create the same opportunity from a different direction. Buyers acquire a historic home east of State Street and want the kitchen brought up to a current premium look without tearing out cabinetry that was built better than most of what is sold today. Refacing lets them keep the good carcasses and step the room forward into white oak or walnut faces that read warm, current, and intentional.

Both directions land on the same move: keep what is solid, replace what is out of trend, and skip the remodel entirely. A brand new looking kitchen, the same week your life keeps moving.

How a Gold Coast refacing project actually goes

It begins at your Cabinet Design Consultation. We come to you, look at your existing boxes, and confirm what we usually find in these towers and mansions: good bones, the carcasses are good, a perfect candidate for refacing. Then we bring the door styles and real finished samples to your island, Shaker, Artesia, Mini Shaker, Flat Panel, Adobe, Asher, Connecticut, in white oak, walnut, maple, or paint-grade, so you can see and feel the faces against your counters and light. Artesia is our most popular, with a 45-degree beveled inside lip that is easier to clean and does not hold dust.

Here is the part that separates us from a franchise. We do not just hang new doors and leave your boxes as-is, hoping the colors land close. We finish the boxes ourselves, in our controlled Pilsen shop, so the new fronts and your existing carcasses read as one seamless kitchen. On the long slab runs common in a tower, or an inset face-frame run in a mansion where the eye catches every shadow line, that consistency is the entire job. We work behind a clean plastic bubble, keep a certificate of insurance on file with building management, book the freight elevator, and leave the corridors spotless. Every project is backed by the Fulton Revivals warranty, start to finish.

Link: See how cabinet refacing works → /services/cabinet-refacing/process/
Link: More on cabinet refacing → /services/cabinet-refacing/

In their own words

What homeowners say after the reveal

★★★★★

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!

Jenny T.
Interior Painting · Evanston
★★★★★

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.

Carol H.
Interior Painting · Brookfield
★★★★★

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.

Margaret P.
Cabinet Refinishing · Deerfield

Gold Coast questions

Questions we hear most

What is cabinet refacing?
Refacing replaces your cabinet doors and drawer fronts with brand-new ones in the style you choose, while keeping your existing cabinet boxes in place. We then finish those boxes to match, so you get a completely new-looking kitchen without tearing out the cabinetry or redoing the layout. If your boxes are solid but the look is dated, refacing transforms the kitchen for far less disruption than a full remodel.
How much does cabinet refacing cost in Chicago?
Refacing typically runs $250 to $450 per door and drawer front. To put that in perspective, a full kitchen remodel often starts around $400 per square foot, so a 15-by-15 kitchen can climb to $75,000 to $100,000. Refacing gets you a brand-new look for a fraction of that. Where you land depends on the door style and detail, your materials, one color or two-tone, and the condition and construction of your existing boxes. For a full breakdown, see our cost guide.
Cabinet refacing vs. replacing or remodeling: which is better?
It comes down to your boxes. If your cabinet boxes are solid and your layout works, refacing gives you the new look you want with far less cost, demolition, and downtime than ripping everything out. A full remodel only makes sense when the boxes are failing or you're changing the footprint of the kitchen. Most kitchens we see are perfect refacing candidates that don't need a teardown.
Is cabinet refacing worth it?
For the right kitchen, absolutely. You keep the good bones, skip the demolition, and walk away with cabinetry that looks brand new in a style you actually chose, usually in well under two weeks. The value is highest when your boxes are sound and it's only the doors, fronts, and finish that have aged out of style.
How long does cabinet refacing take?
A typical reface runs about 5 to 10 working days. We finish your existing boxes on-site, build and finish the new doors and drawer fronts at our shop, then come back to hang and adjust everything. The install side takes a little longer than a paint job, because dialing in all-new doors and fronts so they sit square and even is precise work.
Am I a good candidate for cabinet refacing?
The simplest test: if you like how your kitchen functions but not how it looks, you're a strong candidate. Refacing keeps your existing boxes, the good bones, and replaces the doors and fronts, so you get a new-looking kitchen without redoing the whole thing. Most kitchens we reface are honey-oak or golden-oak, arch-top cabinets from the early-to-mid 2000s, dated and aged out of style, where the finish has faded and the hardware is wearing.
What door styles do you offer?
Seven curated styles: Shaker, Artesia (a Shaker with a 45-degree beveled inside edge, our most popular), Mini Shaker, Flat Panel, Adobe, Asher, and Connecticut. Together they cover everything from clean and modern to warm and traditional. They're all the same price, so you choose on the look you love, not on budget.
What are the most common types of cabinet doors?
The most common cabinet door styles are Shaker (a flat recessed center panel in a square frame), flat panel or slab (a single smooth front), and Artesia (a Shaker with a 45-degree beveled inside edge that reads more custom). There's also the Mini Shaker, sometimes called a slim shaker, which narrows the frame for a tighter, more modern look. We offer seven curated styles built around these profiles.
What's the difference between inset and overlay cabinet doors?
It's about how the door sits on the cabinet box. Overlay doors rest on top of the frame and cover most or all of it, which is what nearly every modern kitchen uses. Inset doors sit flush inside the frame, like fine furniture, for a more traditional, built-in look that costs more and requires precise fitting. Our refacing uses overlay doors.
Do different door styles cost more than others?
No. All seven door styles are priced the same. What changes the price is the wood you choose, not the style. We offer paint grade, Select maple, and white oak (plain sawn, quarter sawn, or rift sawn) as our top three, plus other species on request. You pick your style on looks and your wood on budget and grain, and they price independently.
Do you finish the cabinet boxes to match the new doors?
Yes, and we do it in-house. After your new doors and drawer fronts are made, we finish your existing boxes to match them, painted or stained, so the whole kitchen reads as one cohesive, new piece rather than new doors on old-looking boxes. That matched, in-house finish is a big part of why a Fulton reface looks built-in, not bolted-on.
How long do refaced cabinets last?
A long time. Your new doors and drawer fronts are solid, new construction in real wood, and a quality kitchen cabinet has a working life of around 20 years or more. Because we keep your existing boxes and only replace and refinish what you see and touch, you get that fresh, new-cabinet lifespan without the cost and demolition of a full replacement.
What's the difference between refacing and refinishing?
Refacing replaces your doors and drawer fronts with brand-new ones in any style you choose, then finishes your boxes to match, so you can completely change the look. Refinishing keeps your existing real-wood doors, restoring them at our shop and the boxes in place, sanding back the old finish and applying new stain and clear coats so the natural grain still shows. Reface to change the style, refinish to bring back the wood you already have.
Can I reface my cabinets in a completely different door style than I have now?
Yes, that's the whole appeal. Refacing replaces your doors and drawer fronts entirely, so you can go from dated arch-top oak to a clean Shaker, a sleek Flat Panel, or any of our seven styles, regardless of what you have now. You keep your existing boxes and layout, and the look changes completely.
Will refaced cabinets look custom, or will they look cheap?
Custom, when it's done the way we do it. The difference is in-house finishing: we build real-wood doors and drawer fronts and finish your boxes to match, so the whole kitchen reads as one cohesive, built-in piece rather than new doors stuck on old boxes. That matched finish is what makes a Fulton reface look like it belongs in your home, not bolted on.
Can you reface just part of my kitchen, like only the island or just the uppers?
Yes. Partial refacing works well when only part of your kitchen needs it or you want a design moment, like a contrasting island or just the uppers. The main thing we check is that the new and existing finishes work together intentionally, so it reads as a deliberate design choice rather than a mismatch. We'll guide that at your consultation.
What kind of cabinets are not worth refacing?
We'll always be honest about this. Refacing relies on solid existing boxes, so if your boxes are water-damaged, falling apart, or made of a material that won't hold new fronts well, or if you want to change your kitchen's layout, replacement is the smarter spend. If your boxes are sound and it's only the look that's dated, you're an ideal reface candidate.

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