Cabinet Refacing and Painting in Franklin, TN

Not every kitchen needs new cabinets. If the boxes are solid and the layout works, new doors or a sprayed finish can change the room without tearing it out. You keep your countertops, your sink stays connected, and the kitchen is out of service for a much shorter time. It is also the option most often oversold, so we would sooner tell you when it is the wrong call.

A lot of Franklin kitchens are good candidates. Homes built in the 1990s and 2000s in Fieldstone Farms, Forrest Crossing, and Cool Springs East often have framed oak or maple cabinets in a honey or orange finish. The finish has dated. The solid wood face frames usually have not. The same is true in many Brentwood brick homes in Brenthaven and River Oaks. In those kitchens, the question is whether the boxes, the drawer hardware, and the layout deserve another long run of service. We check all three before we recommend anything.

What Refacing and Painting Include

• An inspection of every box, shelf, hinge, and drawer before we recommend refacing, painting, or replacement
• For refacing: new doors and drawer fronts in the style you choose, with matching veneer or solid wood applied to the face frames and exposed ends
• For painting: doors and drawer fronts removed, cleaned, sanded, primed, and sprayed off site, with frames and ends finished in place inside a contained work area
• Grain filling on oak when you want a smooth finish
• New soft close hinges, plus new drawer boxes and undermount slides where the old ones are worn
• New pulls and knobs, with old hardware holes filled when the spacing changes
• Optional additions such as roll out shelves, a trash pull out, crown molding, or panels for the island back
• Floor and countertop protection, plastic dust walls, and a clean site at the end of every day

How the Work Goes

1. Inspect and advise. We come to your home, open every door, pull every drawer, and look under the sink. You get a plain answer on whether the boxes are worth keeping.
2. Choose the door and finish. We bring door and finish samples to see in your own light. If you are refacing, you approve the door style, the elevations, and any storage changes before anything is ordered.
3. Fix the price in writing. You get a fixed written price before work starts. Changes only happen when you ask for them, and they are priced in writing first.
4. Have materials in hand first. New doors, drawer fronts, and hardware arrive and are inspected before we touch the kitchen. For painting, doors leave for the shop on a written schedule, so you know how long the boxes will be open.
5. Work clean. Floors and counters are covered, the room is closed off with plastic, and the frames are prepped and finished in place. You can usually keep using the sink and appliances for most of the job.
6. Hang, adjust, and walk through. Doors go back on new hinges, gaps are set even, hardware is fitted, and your project lead walks the kitchen with you.

When It Is the Right Call, and When It Is Not

Refacing or painting makes sense when:

• The boxes are plywood or solid wood, square, and firmly attached, with no water damage
• You like where the sink, range, and refrigerator are
• The countertops are staying, or were replaced recently
• The doors are dated in color or style but the cabinets work well

The boxes are not worth keeping when:

• The sink base or the cabinet beside the dishwasher is swollen or soft from past leaks
• The boxes are thin particleboard with shelves that sag and screws that no longer hold
• Face frames are loose, cracked at the joints, or pulling away from the box
• You want to move the sink, resize the island, lose the desk nook, or remove the soffit and take cabinets to the ceiling
• New stone countertops are planned and the boxes underneath are already marginal

In those cases new cabinets are the better use of your money, and we will say so. Our kitchen cabinets page covers semi custom lines, and custom kitchen cabinets covers work built to the room.

Paint, Doors, and What to Expect From the Finish

A cabinet finish is not wall paint. We use sprayed catalyzed coatings made for cabinetry, which cure hard and stand up to cleaning. Doors and drawer fronts are sprayed flat in a shop, where dust and temperature are controlled. Frames are finished in place. Prep is most of the job: degreasing, sanding, and a bonding primer are what keep the finish from chipping at the edges.

The wood underneath matters. Maple paints smooth. Oak shows its grain through paint unless it is filled first, and even then some texture can remain. Thermofoil doors, the vinyl wrapped kind, do not take paint well once they start to peel, so those doors should be replaced. When refacing, a five piece Shaker door in paint grade maple is the most common choice here, and slab or beaded doors are available. A stained finish in rift cut white oak is possible with matching veneer on the frames.

Expect some movement. Humid summers and dry heated winters make wood swell and shrink, and on a painted door that can show as a hairline where rail meets stile. It is normal and not a failure of the finish. One limit to know: refacing changes the fronts, not the construction. Framed cabinets with partial overlay doors can be given larger doors for a fuller overlay look, but they cannot become true inset or frameless cabinets.

What Drives the Cost

• The number of doors and drawer fronts
• Refacing versus painting, since new doors and veneer cost more than finishing the existing ones
• Door style and material for refacing
• Grain filling on oak
• How many drawer boxes, slides, and hinges are replaced
• Added pieces such as crown, end panels, roll outs, or a new island back
• Repairs to boxes or frames found during the inspection

You receive a fixed written price after the inspection and selections, before work begins. The only changes are ones you ask for, priced in writing first.

Find Out What Your Cabinets Are Worth

The first step is a look at the boxes. Book a kitchen consultation and we will inspect your cabinets, show you door and finish samples, and tell you whether refacing, painting, or replacement makes the most sense for your kitchen. Or call (615) 555-0100.

Is it better to paint or reface kitchen cabinets?

Painting keeps your existing doors and changes the color. Refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts and covers the face frames in matching veneer, so the style changes too. Paint is the right call when you like the door style and the doors are in good shape. Refacing is better when the doors are dated, damaged, or a flat panel style that paint will not improve. Both depend on the boxes being sound.

Can you paint oak cabinets without the grain showing?

Oak has open grain, and paint alone will not hide it. The pores show through as texture, which some people like and many do not. To get a smooth finish, the grain has to be filled and sanded before primer, which adds labor. If you want a completely smooth painted door, replacing the oak doors with new paint grade maple doors is often the cleaner result, and we will show you samples of both.

How well does a painted cabinet finish hold up?

A sprayed catalyzed finish applied over proper prep holds up well to daily use and cleaning. It is much harder than wall paint brushed on site. The areas that wear first are the ones you touch most, such as the doors below the sink and the drawer by the range. Hardware helps, because hands land on the pull and not the paint. Expect hairline cracks at door joints over time as the wood moves with the seasons.

When should I replace my kitchen cabinets instead of refacing them?

Replace them when the boxes are failing or the layout is the real problem. Swollen particleboard under the sink, sagging shelves, loose face frames, and drawer boxes that are coming apart are signs the boxes are not worth new doors. So is a plan to move the sink, change the island, or remove the soffit and run cabinets to the ceiling. New doors on a layout you dislike is money spent on the wrong thing.

Can I keep my countertops if I reface or paint the cabinets?

Yes. That is one of the main reasons to do it. The boxes stay in place, so the countertops, sink, and backsplash are not disturbed. The reverse is the decision to think about: if you plan to install new stone soon, be sure the old boxes deserve it, because new countertops commit you to those cabinets and that layout for a long time. We will give you a straight answer after looking at the boxes.