Kitchen Cabinets: Paint or Replace?
The kitchen is the most popular and most frequented room in my house, and probably yours. When buyers are looking at potential houses they bee-line it to the kitchen and make all kind of judgements about it (positive, we hope).
Since cabinets make up most of your kitchen, deciding whether to upgrade or replace them during a remodel is an important question. It’s a decision we make on every project we do, overall coming in about 50/50 on fix vs buy.
Pros and Cons of Painting.
Pros:
1. Cost-effective: Painting your existing cabinets is a much more affordable option, hiring an experienced cabinet painter is roughly 20-25% the cost of buying new ones, and it can give your kitchen a fresh, updated look without breaking the bank.
2. Quick and painless: Painting cabinets is a relatively quick process that can be completed in a matter of days vs weeks of demolition, delivery and installation for new cabinets. Plus you get bonus green points for not filling up the dump with your bulky old cabinets.
3. Custom colors and looks. You have more color options when painting vs buying, and of course endless options to upgrade those cabinet pulls. New paint + pulls, done professionally, can deliver a million dollar look for your kitchen.
Cons:
1. Limited remodel options: If you don’t love your kitchen’s layout, the solution may be a more thorough remodel that entails major cabinet moves. As a rule of thumb, we consider painting if 75% plus of the existing cabinets are good where they are. Less than that gets into a lot more labor and you’re better off going all new.
2. Missing out on new features: Better quality lines of new cabinets have many layout and feature options… soft close drawers, lazy susan’s, pull-out pantries and more that buyers are looking for. While you can add some of these features to your old cabinets, adding all of them adds a lot of cost and labor leading back again to the all-new decision.
3. Garbage in, garbage out: Yes, you can put a new paint job on Chevy Vega but it’s still a Vega underneath. Likewise if your old cabinets have peeling veneers, lots of chips, warped doors or really are anything other than solid wood and well-kept then they are not good candidates.
Which cabinets were painted? Which were new? Hmmm…
But What About My Kitchen?
A couple things to think about…
1. Do you like, love or hate your kitchen now? The question gets down to how much remodeling you really should do. In some cases the current layout, flow and functionality are pretty good and you just need some freshening up. In others the kitchen is the Achilles heel of the house and you’ll want to demo the whole thing. It’s a good idea to enlist the opinions of real estate professionals and designers on this question, whether you plan to keep the house for awhile or sell right away.
2. Take a sober look at your cabinets. Are they solid wood, or cheaper MDF or laminate? Do you like the style of the doors, will that style work with your other kitchen upgrades? Are the doors straight, the wood mostly free of dings and chips, the hinges good?
3. Are you really, really handy? We strongly recommend hiring an experienced cabinet painter (not just any painter) because painting a cabinet is a LOT harder than painting a wall. But if you are really handy, meticulous and have a lot of prep and painting experience it can be a DIY job.
Painting Best Practices
Some tips for those brave DIY’ers taking on the job, or screening questions you can use when hiring a pro cabinet painter.
1. All about the prep
Most of the time is spent here as bad prep can kill great paint. Remove all cabinet doors, drawers, and hardware. Clean the cabinets thoroughly with a degreaser to remove any grease and grime. Sand the cabinets lightly to remove any existing finish and to create a rough surface for the new paint to adhere to. Fill any holes or gaps with wood filler and let it dry completely. Sand the cabinets again to ensure a smooth surface. Wipe the cabinets clean with a damp cloth to remove any dust.
2. Choose the right paint
Start with a top quality primer to ensure good adhesion and coverage of the paint, then go with 2 coats of a high-quality paint that is specifically formulated for cabinets. Semi-gloss tends to be easier to clean, while satin and matte can have that more modern look. For color, we recommend consulting with a designer or spending a LOT of time on Houzz and Pinterest to find your shade.
3. Painting the cabinets
Once the cabinets are prepared and primed it's time to paint. Use a high-quality brush or a paint sprayer to apply the paint. Apply thin coats of paint and let each coat dry completely before applying the next coat. Avoid heavy coats of paint as they can lead to drips and an uneven finish.
4. Door and pulls
Once the final coat of paint has dried, it's time to reattach the cabinet doors and hardware. Unless you have historically cool cabinet pulls on there now, spring for new ones which can make a huge impact on the overall look. To install new pulls, make sure you use a template tool so they go on professionally straight.
Get Your Free Kitchen Assessment!
If you live in the SF Bay Area we are happy to come out for a high level kitchen assessment. We’ll look at it as we would if we were to buy and resell your house, and give you some ideas for the kind of cost-effective upgrades to cabinets and more that we would consider if it was our own money at stake. And we promise we won’t judge your kitchen (well, maybe just a little).