The Cabinet Refacing Process

Our Process

Refacing follows the same disciplined process as our cabinet painting, with two real differences: your doors and drawer fronts are brand new, and the reinstall is far more precise. Your kitchen is finished in three places, in this order:

1. At your home, your cabinet boxes, refinished inside a sealed, dust-controlled space.
2. At our shop, your new custom doors and drawer fronts, finished in a controlled environment.
3. Back at your home, a precise, hand-aligned reinstall of your new doors and drawer fronts.

Before the job, measuring and ordering your doors

A reface begins well before we arrive to work. During your Curated Design Session, we measure every door and drawer down to a sixteenth of an inch and walk through door style with you, so the proportions and the look are right for your kitchen and your vision. We place your custom door order, and that order is built while your project is scheduled. This lead time is normal and it is what lets your new doors fit perfectly.

Phase A. At your home, protecting the space & refinishing/painting your boxes

This is almost identical to our cabinet painting protection, because your home deserves the same care no matter the service.

We remove your existing doors and drawer fronts. Since this is a reface, those old fronts are removed and disposed of at our facility. Your brand-new doors will take their place later.

We lay red rosin paper and tape your floors, using low-adhesion tape on freshly refinished floors. We cover countertops and mask the walls, ceiling, appliances, and lighting. We seal the inside of every box and drawer so you can leave your things in place.

Then we build a sealed room around your kitchen with a full plastic wall, seal the doorways, run a ventilation line out a window, and switch on our negative air pressure machine. Air flows out of your home and never back in. No smell, no dust, no debris in the rest of your house.

We clean and de-gloss every surface, then sand thoroughly, power sanding the flats and hand sanding every detail through 80 to 120 grit, using Festool sanders with HEPA extraction.

We clean the space again, prime in multiple thin coats, re-sand, then fill, caulk, and spot sand. Then we spray our ILVA 2K polyurethane in thin, even coats until the finish is fully solid. We break down the sealed space and leave your home spotless and your freshly redone cabinet boxes spotless.

Phase B. At our shop, your new doors and drawer fronts

Your brand-new custom doors and drawer fronts are finished at our shop, in the same controlled environment of perfect light and temperature where the most visible part of your kitchen gets the attention it deserves. The result is a flawless, factory-grade finish on doors built specifically for your kitchen.

Phase C. Back at your home, the precision reinstall

This is where refacing asks the most of us, and where the difference shows.

Reinstalling new doors and drawer fronts is far more involved than rehanging existing ones. Every door has to be hung and every drawer front set so the gaps and reveals are even across the whole kitchen. We do real measuring and use jigs to get each face sitting exactly where it should, working until everything opens, closes, and lines up perfectly.

Once every door and drawer front is hung, aligned, and functioning the way it should, the last thing we do is install your handles and knobs.

That is the cabinet refacing process.