Cabinets

The most used room in your home is probably the kitchen and nothing stands out and influences the mood of your kitchen more than the cabinets.  Almost always, the look of your kitchen cabinets wears out its welcome long before the utilitarian function fails.  Remodeling your entire kitchen is expensive, inconvenient and can takes months.  Increasingly people are opting to reface their existing kitchen cabinets rather than replace them. 

Commonly cabinet refacing is done by a service where they send in a couple people who do all the work for you.  The project usually starts with a planning phase.  People will come out to your home and measure all of the cabinet doors and drawers and the back frame areas to be covered.  After you have reviewed their plan and the price and approved the project the company will either manufacture the new cabinet doors themselves in their own facility or purchase them.  The biggest decision you will make if you reface your cabinets is deciding what style, color and material you will go with.  Generally there are 3 types of material used for refacing projects.  The cheapest material used is usually rigid thermafoil (RTF).  RTF is a PVC plastic that is pressure and heat molded to a fiberboard base door.  Because RTF is very moldable the door can be almost any shape the manufacturer wants to make it.  Insets and raised panels are no problem for RTF.  The next step up from RTF is plastic laminate surfaces which are slightly more expensive than RTF.  Because they are rigid the fronts of the doors tend to be flat or simple with very few style choices available.  The third option is to go with real wood veneer.  Although more expensive than the other two options, up close nothing beats the warmth and beauty of real wood.  The actual installation usually takes the refacing service only a day or two depending on the size of the project.  They start the work in your home by removing all of the old cabinet doors and drawers and any exposed hardware.  The old cabinet doors and drawer fronts usually get thrown away.  Then they prepare the exposed surface of the back frames and sides by sanding or some other roughening method.  After this is done they clean all the surfaces and glue or nail the new materials to the old back frame making sure that base boards and cabinet undersides are covered.  Everything you would normally see when the cabinet doors and drawers are closed is covered with the new material.  Then to finish they install the new cabinet doors and front plates for the drawers.  

Sometimes, if you request it, they will also install new drawer slides.  Many services may offer to resurface your countertops to match the new cabinet refacing.  So before you decide to go with a refacing service make sure you understand what exactly they are going to do and how much it is going to cost.  Meet with the company several times if necessary so that there are no misunderstandings.  There are so many options available when it comes to refacing kitchen cabinets that miscommunication is very easy.