Monday, April 05, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

KITCHEN IMPROVEMENTS: Sprucing Up

Old cabinets can be given new surfaces, finishes without having to rip everything out

Homeowner Susan Ross and Pro Cabinets/Kitchen Tune-Up owner Scott Miller stand in Ross' kitchen, complete with newly refaced cabinets. Scott Miller, owner of Pro Cabinets/Kitchen Tune-Up, in the process of refacing kitchen cabinets. Susan Ross' kitchen before her cabinets were worked on. Ross' kitchen after her cabinets were refaced. Scott Miller puts the finishing touches on a newly refaced cabinet. Susan Ross' newly refaced cabinets have a fresh, streamlined appearance. Photos by Clint Karlsen.

Here's a situation that's all too familiar to a legion of homeowners, in the Las Vegas Valley and across the country, dating to the creation of the modern kitchen:

You hate your kitchen cabinets. Hate them. They're the wrong color/wrong finish/wrong design/showing signs of wear. You can't believe the bad taste of the previous homeowner and want nothing more than to rip those suckers out and replace them with something that's more in tune with your own impeccable sense of style.

But there's that word: rip. Rip connotes mess, clutter, rubble, disruption of your life. So what's a poor homeowner to do?

Well, you could buck up and just deal with the mess, start again from scratch. But there are alternatives.

"One of the things we do to avoid having to rip everything out is cabinet refacing," said Scott Miller, owner of Pro Cabinets, a Kitchen Tune-Up franchise at 5220 S. Jones Blvd. "That's where you replace the doors and drawer fronts and the existing cabinet boxes get reskinned with a matching veneer."

Miller said refacing can be done in "just about any color, any door style. You can totally change the look without having to rip everything out."

The four most popular finishes, he said, are oak, maple, hickory and cherry. Beechwood, birch and pine are also available.

"Anything that a new cabinet is available in, you can have your cabinets refaced in," Miller said.

Colors, too, through the use of a laminate product.

"That's getting more popular," Miller said, "because wood is getting more scarce and more expensive."

Susan Ross chose the refacing option for her kitchen in Sun City Summerlin. When she bought her home, Ross said, she acquired cabinets that were "dated and old and I didn't like them. That was just one of many things I didn't like about what I inherited when I bought this house."

The cabinets, she said, were "kind of a whitewash. They just looked old, and they weren't pretty. I just didn't like anything about them." So she chose refacing, in a white finish.

"This got the look I wanted, and it was more economical," Ross said.

But refacing is only one of several options. In cabinet restoration or reconditioning, the "problem areas" of the cabinets are sanded, stained and tinted, Miller said.

"We blend those areas back into the existing cabinets and topcoat the entire kitchen," he said.

Another option is complete stripping and staining, said Valerie Deckard, administrative assistant at Tropical Islands Kitchens.

A popular choice, she said, is the application of a lacquer finish.

"It only costs half of what reskinning the cabinets would cost," Deckard said. The lacquer can be done in a variety of finishes, she said, from eggshell white to mahogany. In a recent job, she said, Tropical Islands Kitchens lacquered 30-year-old cabinets in eggshell white and added rope molding around the edges, crown molding at the top.

"And her kitchen just looks beautiful," Deckard said. "Because we do hard finishes, we guarantee that it lasts for a good 10 years."

Other options, she said, include European-style hidden hinges, new hardware, and drilling for knobs on cabinets that don't have them, "because the oil on your hands can actually put a lot of wear and tear on kitchen cabinets" without knobs or handles.

There are a number of options for do-it-yourselfers, too. Debby Vance, an interior designer and kitchen designer at the Home Depot at 9705 W. Charleston Blvd., said they include refacing, painting and sanding and restaining.

Of refacing, she said, "it's not very difficult. It's preglued, sort of like Contact paper. So it's self-adhesive."

But Vance had a caveat.

"Standard cabinet doors are 75 to 80 percent of cabinet price." Add the price of the reskinning material and you're "pretty close to the cost of a new cabinet."

"If you really like what you have, refacing is a good option," Vance said. "If you don't like what you have, then you should consider replacing. If you're asking to update it, it's usually time to replace."

Miller said a standard refacing runs about $4,000 to $6,000, for an average Las Vegas tract-house kitchen with 25 to 35 doors and drawers. The job takes three to four days, he said.

Ask for the cost of full replacement, he said, "That's like asking how much a new car costs. Maybe $7,500, because when you're looking at new cabinets, you're looking at new counter tops. Whenever that top comes out, there's no way to get it out without doing some kind of damage."

Miller said one recent client had a fairly new home with $10,000 in granite counter tops. Refacing enabled her to get the cabinets she liked without having to replace the counter tops.

Vance said another advantage of refacing is "if you've got existing flooring and you're trying to match the footprint exactly, it's kind of the past of least resistance."

Cabinet restoration, Miller said, runs $500 to $1,000 on average.

"We do a lot of restoration work on resale homes -- getting it ready to list," he said.

Deckard also estimated an average refacing at $4,500, and lacquer at about $1,500.

Whichever option a homeowner chooses, Deckard advises paying only half the total amount up front, and the other half on completion.

Vance advises getting price quotes for various alternatives.

"If you're thinking about refacing, price replacing as well," she said."An educated consumer is the best customer."