Your moment
New Home, New Kitchen
Just bought a home with a dated kitchen? The best time to do your cabinets is before you move in, while the rooms are empty. Make it yours from day one. Across Chicago and the suburbs. Get your estimate.
EPA Lead-SafeCertified Firm
Licensed & InsuredYour home protected
5.0 on Google125+ reviews
250+ Five-Staracross all platforms
Est. 2012Founder-led
You inherited the kitchen. Now make it yours.
There is a particular feeling to a kitchen you did not choose. You can cook in it, you can live with it, but every time you reach for a cabinet you are touching a decision someone else made in 2004. The arch-top doors, the orangey stain, the hardware that is not your taste. None of it is broken. It just is not you. And a home does not really feel like yours until the kitchen does, because the kitchen is where you actually live.
Most new homeowners assume the kitchen is a "someday" project, something to save up for and circle back to in five years once the dust of moving has settled. But that someday almost always turns into a decade of cooking around a kitchen you never liked, telling yourself you will get to it eventually. The window that is actually open, the one that closes the day the moving truck arrives, is right now.
Do it now, while the house is empty
The reason to do your cabinets before you move in is not just emotional. It is practical, and it is the single biggest scheduling advantage a homeowner ever gets.
No cooking around it. Once you are living in a home, a kitchen project means working around dinner, around the coffee maker, around real life. Do it before you move in and none of that exists yet. We come into an empty kitchen, we work clean and efficient, and you walk into your finished kitchen on day one instead of living through the in-between.
Easy access, the whole way. An empty house is a dream to work in. Clear counters, nothing in the cabinets to box up and relocate, no furniture to protect in the next room, full run of the space. That access lets us move faster and finish cleaner, and it means your fresh paint or your new fronts are not navigating around your life while they cure.
The look you actually want, from the first day you live there. This is the heart of it. Instead of unpacking into a kitchen that is not yours and resenting it a little every morning, you move into the kitchen you chose. The color you picked. The style you picked. The room already feels like home the day you carry the first box through the door. That is a completely different way to start in a house.
For all of it, we still bring the same encapsulated, clean process we use in occupied homes, the kitchen sealed in plastic, the negative pressure machine venting dust outside, the doors finished in our shop. Empty house or not, we leave it spotless.
Painting or refacing, depending on the kitchen
The right move depends on what you inherited, and we will help you read it at the consultation.
If the boxes and door style are decent and it is really the color that dates the room, painting is the fastest path to a kitchen that feels like yours. A factory-smooth, sprayed finish in the color you have been picturing, your existing cabinets brought back to brand new, done in roughly five to ten working days.
If the door style itself is out of trend, the heavy arch-tops, the dated raised panels, refacing is the move. We keep the boxes you have, and replace the doors and drawer fronts with brand-new ones in a clean Shaker, Artesia, Mini Shaker, Flat Panel, Adobe, Asher, or Connecticut. It is the closest thing to a brand-new kitchen without a remodel, and it resets the whole look to something that is unmistakably yours.
Either way, an empty house is the ideal canvas, and we will tell you honestly which path your particular kitchen wants.
One honest offramp, if you are not quite closed yet. Sometimes the timing is right but the access is not. If you are still under contract, still waiting on the keys, or in a situation where you genuinely cannot get us into the home before you take possession, we will be straight with you: the empty-house advantage only works if we can actually get in. We are happy to plan the project with you now and start the day the house is truly yours. We would rather do it right with real access than rush in before you have the keys. No pressure, no penalty for waiting until the timing is real.
EXPLORE FROM HERE
- The fast way to make it yours: Cabinet Painting in Chicagoland → /services/cabinet-painting/
- A brand-new look without a remodel: Cabinet Refacing in Chicagoland → /services/cabinet-refacing/
- New to the neighborhood? Find your area → /locations/
- Timing, access, and what to expect: See the FAQ → /faq/
How we help
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The right cabinet path for this moment.
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
1,500+
Kitchens Revived
250+
reviews across all platforms
5.0
Rating on google
2012
serving chicago since
Ready when you are
Ready to start your new homeowner project?
Common questions
Questions we hear most
- What areas of Chicago and the suburbs do you serve?
- We work within about a 50-mile radius, roughly an hour's drive from our shop in Pilsen at Union and Cermak. That covers all of Chicago and most of the surrounding suburbs, including the North Shore. About half our work is city condos and high-rises (Lincoln Park, Old Town, Gold Coast, River North, River West), the other half suburban homes. Not sure if you're in range? Just ask.
- How does your estimate and consultation process work?
- It starts with a Cabinet Design Consultation in your home, where we look at your cabinets, talk through what you want to change, and give you an honest read on whether painting, refacing, or refinishing is the right path. From there we move into The Curated Design Session for color and style, then the work itself, and finish with the final reveal. We call the whole arc From Revival to Reveal.
- Do you offer a warranty on your work?
- Yes. Every project is backed by our written warranty, and we hand you the full terms in plain English before you sign. Companies waving around 7 to 15 year warranties are usually betting you won't read the exclusions. The best warranty is the one you never have to use, which is why we build the finish to last and stand behind it as the owner, not a call center.
- How long does a typical cabinet project take?
- Most cabinet sets take about 5 to 10 working days start to finish. We do the boxes in your home (usually 2 to 4 days for a typical kitchen, longer for larger sets), finish the doors and drawer fronts at our shop (3 to 5 days), then come back for a final reinstall day. Refacing runs a bit longer on the install side, since hanging all-new doors and drawer fronts and dialing them in takes more time than rehanging your originals.
- Are you licensed and insured?
- Yes. We operate as Fulton Revivals LLC, properly licensed for the work we do and fully insured. We can issue a Certificate of Insurance in 24 to 48 hours and add your condo association as additional insured when your building requires it.
- How much does it cost to redo my kitchen cabinets?
- It depends on a lot of factors, but here's a real starting point. Painting and refinishing typically run $150 to $250 per door and drawer front, and refacing runs $250 to $450 per door and drawer front. Where you land inside those ranges comes down to the specifics: the age and wear of your cabinets, the mechanics and hinge style, the overlay, the size and ceiling height of the kitchen, and any damage like weathering, water, impact, or buildup. Frameless versus face-frame or inset construction matters too, as does the door style and level of detail. We feed all of it into our production rates and price the job down to the penny. For a full breakdown by service, see our cost guide.
- Do you do other work besides cabinets?
- Cabinets are our specialty: painting, refacing, and refinishing. We also do interior painting, exterior painting, and minor custom carpentry, and we love whole-home projects where we handle the kitchen along with vanities, built-ins, a bar, mudroom, or fireplace surround in one go.
- Do you install cabinet hardware?
- Yes. We provide and install all hinges and drawer slides, including soft-close upgrades, and we can add trash pull-outs, end panels, and minor custom carpentry. For handles and knobs, you choose and supply them (we'll give you a recommendation list), and they need to be at your home on the first day so we drill the placements correctly.
Ready when you are