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Replace Kitchen Cabinets

When it’s Time for Replacing Kitchen Cabinets

Christopher Smith

It’s a lot of fun to wander through home improvement store kitchen displays and look at the beautiful cabinets that are available. For most people, these shining cabinets make the ones they have at home look pretty shabby. Years of use, build-ups of cooking grease, fingerprints, and regular slammings have probably taken their toll. Add those blemishes to the fact that the cabinets you have look like they came right out of the 1970s, and it’s no wonder that you aren’t happy with the way your kitchen looks. That’s when you start to wonder if there’s any affordable way of replacing kitchen cabinets.

There are several ways to update your kitchen cabinets without tearing out the existing ones and totally replacing them. These methods will cost much less than what demolition and replacement will cost, and a lot of the work you will be able to do yourself. You know how much that can save you! When dealing with your cabinets, you basically have three choices: replace, reface, or refinish. As we’ve said, of the three, replacing the cabinets altogether will be the most expensive option. However, if your existing cabinets are made of metal or flimsy and poorly made, you may want to consider this option. There are salvage yards and discount lumber dealerships where you can buy new kitchen cabinets at a fraction of the price you’d pay in a home improvement showroom.

Refinishing and refacing processes both start the same way. Remove all cabinet doors and hardware, and give the wood surfaces a thorough cleaning. Once you see the condition of the doors, you can decide if you want to refinish and reuse them, paint them, or reface them. Refinishing or painting will undoubtedly be the most economical methods of updating your cabinets, but they will also be the most labor intensive. If you want to restain and varnish them, it will mean stripping the surfaces down to the bare wood, putting on a coat of stain, and then adding several coats of a hard polyurethane. With refacing, you will need to hire someone to cover the cabinets with a veneer and put on new doors. While more expensive, it’s definitely an easier way of refurbishing kitchen cabinets.