If you’ve started pricing a kitchen update, you’ve probably noticed that “new cabinets” is where the budget goes to die. Here’s the thing most cabinet showrooms won’t lead with: the wooden boxes screwed to your wall are usually the best-built part of your kitchen. What’s worn out is the surface — the finish, the color, sometimes the doors. And surfaces can be renewed for a fraction of what replacement costs.
We’ve spent over twenty years finishing cabinets in Northern Colorado, and we tell our own neighbors the same thing we’ll tell you here: there are three ways to get a kitchen that looks new, and the right one depends on your cabinets — not on what anyone is trying to sell you.
Option 1: Refinishing — keep everything, renew the surface
Refinishing means we keep your existing doors, drawer fronts, and boxes, then strip, repair, and re-coat them with a durable, factory-grade sprayed finish. You can stay with a refreshed version of your current look, change the stain tone, or go to a completely different painted color — two-tone islands included.
When it’s the right call: your doors are solid wood or in good shape, you like (or can live with) your current door style and layout, and what bothers you is the color, the wear, or a finish that’s gone dull, sticky, or patchy.
What it costs: the least of the three — typically a fraction of replacement. Most kitchens take one to two weeks, and because the boxes are finished in place with proper masking and containment, your kitchen stays usable for most of it.
Option 2: Refacing — new doors on your existing boxes
Refacing replaces the visible parts — doors, drawer fronts, and exposed panels — while reusing your structurally sound boxes. New doors mean you can change the door style, not just the color: shaker profiles, slab fronts, new hardware layouts.
When it’s the right call: the boxes are sound but the doors are damaged, dated beyond what a finish can fix, or you simply want a different style. It’s the middle ground — a more dramatic change than refinishing, at meaningfully less than replacement.
What it costs: more than refinishing (you’re buying new doors), still well under replacement. Because we supply the doors and finish everything in the same booth, the new doors and your existing frames match exactly.
Option 3: Replacement — when it’s actually worth it
Sometimes replacement is the honest answer, and we’ll say so at an estimate. New cabinets make sense when the boxes themselves are failing — water-damaged, delaminating particleboard, broken face frames — or when you want a different layout: walls moved, island added, everything reconfigured.
What it costs: typically three to five times the price of refinishing once you include demolition, new cabinetry, installation, and the counter and plumbing work that usually follows. It’s also weeks without a kitchen rather than days of inconvenience.
The 60-second self-check
Stand in your kitchen and ask:
- Open a cabinet and press on the side panels. Solid and dry? The boxes are fine — replacement is probably money wasted.
- Look at what bothers you. If it’s color or wear, that’s refinishing. If it’s the door style, that’s refacing. If it’s where the cabinets are, that’s a remodel conversation.
- Check the doors. Solid wood or in good condition means refinish-ready. Peeling thermofoil or blown-out hinge holes points toward refacing.
What we’d tell a neighbor
Most kitchens we walk into need refinishing or refacing, not replacement — and the difference in cost is often the difference between “someday” and “this fall.” If you’re not sure which side your kitchen falls on, send us a few photos. You’ll get an honest written estimate, and if the right answer is something we don’t sell, we’ll tell you that too.
Want a number right now? Our instant quote tool gives you a real range from a few photos of your cabinets, in about a minute. Or request a free estimate and we’ll take a proper look.