Here are the questions we hear most often in Streetsville, with plain answers.
Some questions are easier to answer with the cabinets in front of us, and the visit is free.
We use cabinet-grade coatings, not wall paint. We choose between a waterborne alkyd enamel, which flows out smoothly and can be tinted to almost anything, and a two-part urethane, which cures quicker and tougher. Both are sprayed. Your cabinet painting quote names which one your kitchen gets.
Yes, and it makes a big difference to the finish. Our spray booth has filtered air and steady heat, and each door dries lying flat. Boxes and face frames remain fixed in place and get sprayed there inside plastic sheeting.
It is possible in homes built before 1960, and some older Streetsville houses fall in that range. We test old paint before any sanding. If lead is found, we use wet methods, stripping and containment, and we explain the plan on the quote.
No. The Streetsville heritage conservation district plan covers the outside of buildings, and it says interior changes do not need a heritage permit. Cabinet painting inside your home is up to you.
They can, provided the face is still intact. A bonding primer lets cabinet painting grip slick factory surfaces. A lifting thermofoil skin has to come off, or the door has to be replaced, since no coating will glue it back.
Interiors are part of the job only if your quote names them. Inside surfaces almost double the sprayed area, and every shelf has to be pulled out and finished on both faces. Most clients do the fronts and face frames and keep the interiors untouched.
That door gets replaced, then sprayed in the same session as the rest so it matches. A new door to replace a swollen sink front or a cracked panel is normally a low-hundreds line item. After the cabinet painting, nobody can pick out the new one.
Not much. The strongest smells happen in our booth, away from your home. Inside the house we only spray waterborne, low-odour coatings, and with a fan going the smell is gone within hours.
Before, if you are changing it at all. Installing a new counter can scratch and chip fresh paint. Cabinet painting belongs at the very end, once the counter, tile and plumbing work is done.
A soft cloth with warm, mildly soapy water is all they need. Keep abrasive pads, cleaning powders and harsh sprays away from them, above all during the first month. Dry any splashes around the sink right away.
Wood shrinks in dry winter air and swells in humid summer air. A thin line at a panel edge in January that closes by summer comes from the wood, and the cabinet painting itself has not let go. Oak raised panel doors show it more than slab doors.
Most jobs need two or three days inside your home. From start to finish, cabinet painting normally wraps up inside two weeks, allowing time for the doors to be sprayed and cured at the shop. Deep shades or a second colour may stretch that by a day or two.
Yes. Many of our jobs are in older village homes, where cupboards and built-ins have several layers of old paint. We test the paint, clean it well and use a bonding primer. Our heritage home cabinet painting page explains the full process.
Yes. Most people stay home for the whole job. Doors get finished at our shop, and the in-house work takes place inside plastic sheeting with air extraction on. Pets should be kept away from the kitchen on spray days.
Yes. Many Vista Heights homes still have their original birch, maple or plywood doors. These take cabinet painting very well with careful sanding and the right primer. Old single knob holes can be filled and new pulls added at the same time.
Yes, by a wide margin. Full kitchen cabinet painting is normally $2,500 to $5,500 in Streetsville, new doors on existing boxes cost three to ten thousand dollars, and a new kitchen begins around $15,000. You pay what your own written quote says.
Each link below expands on something mentioned in the answers.
We take every door and drawer front down, clean off the kitchen grease, prime for the real material underneath and spray a hard enamel finish. Kitchen cabinet painting recolours every cupboard in the room, and the counters, sink and floor never move.
See Kitchen Cabinets
Older village houses often hold cupboards and built-ins covered in decades of oil paint, and those layers need cleaning, testing and a bonding primer before anything new goes on. Heritage home cabinet painting gives that old woodwork a fresh, hard finish while keeping the trim, panels and shape that make the house what it is.
See Heritage Homes
Oak pushes brown tannin stains up through ordinary primer, and its deep grain shows under colour unless it is filled first. Oak cabinet painting handles both with a tannin-blocking primer plus a decision about the grain before any coat goes on.
See Oak Cabinets
Refinishing removes a worn clear coat, refreshes or changes the stain, and seals the wood under a new sprayed clear finish. The grain stays visible, so when the timber is the best feature of the room, refinishing wins over cabinet painting.
See Refinishing
Fronts are finished in our clean-air booth, and the boxes on your walls are coated at home inside a sealed plastic enclosure. Spraying lays each coat of cabinet painting down thin and level, so the finish reads smooth with no brush or roller marks.
See Spray Painting
Shiny factory doors will hold colour after degreasing, a fine scuff and a coat of adhesion primer meant for vinyl and plastic faces. Cabinet painting works on thermofoil only while the vinyl skin is still tight, so we check every door before we quote.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
New doors and drawer fronts go onto the cabinet boxes you already have, and the boxes and frames are sprayed to match. On price and on how much changes, it falls somewhere between cabinet painting and a whole new kitchen.
See Refacing and New Doors
Putting a deeper shade on the island or the base cabinets, with pale uppers above, adds depth to a room without any renovation. Two-tone cabinet painting needs two colours, two spray setups and a clear plan for where each colour goes.
See Two-Tone and Islands
A vanity takes steam, splashes and hand cream every day, so it needs a harder finish and a proper cure before normal use. Vanity cabinet painting is normally a one- or two-day job and a fraction of what a replacement vanity costs.
See Bathroom Vanities
Condo and townhouse kitchens are usually small, but building rules about elevators, parking, quiet hours and odour shape how the job runs. Condo kitchen cabinet painting sends the doors out of the unit to be sprayed, so the smell and the overspray never reach the shared halls.
See Condo Kitchens
Pantries, laundry cabinets, mudroom lockers, bookcases and fireplace built-ins are primed and sprayed with the enamel we use on kitchen doors. Most of these are fastened to the wall, so we do the cabinet painting where they stand, with taped plastic sealing off the room.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Unused knob holes get plugged before primer, a jig guides every new pull hole, and tired hinges are replaced with the doors already down. Adding hardware to a cabinet painting job costs less than doing it later and gives the whole kitchen a finished look.
See Hardware and Hinges
We spray one of your real cabinet doors in the shade on your shortlist and hang it back up for several days. Seeing a real sample under your own windows is the safest route to a cabinet painting colour you will still enjoy years later.
See Colour ConsultationTell us about the cupboards, even roughly, and a visit gets arranged by phone. A name and a phone number are enough to send it. To speak with someone now, phone +1 (289) 207-0024.
