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.
These doors are common in Streetsville. Many kitchens from the 1990s and early 2000s came with white thermofoil. Townhouses near Britannia Road, basement kitchens and rental units often have melamine or laminate. None of these surfaces will hold ordinary paint. With the right primer, they can still take cabinet painting well.
Tight thermofoil, solid melamine and sound laminate all take cabinet painting over a bonding primer. Lifting thermofoil, swollen particleboard and chipped edges do not.
We check each door by pressing along the edges and looking for bubbles or gaps. Doors next to the dishwasher, oven and kettle get the closest look. When only a few doors fail, new ones take their place and get sprayed alongside the others. If most of them fail, new doors on the old boxes may be the better route. We weigh repair against new doors in cabinet refacing and door replacement.
Heat from the oven and steam from the dishwasher soften the glue under the vinyl skin. That is why peeling starts near those appliances.
Once the skin lifts, cabinet painting cannot hold it down. The peeling keeps going under the new paint. The fix is to strip the vinyl off and prime the bare board, or to replace the door. Stripped thermofoil doors show the MDF core, which paints well once it is sealed.
A bonding primer adds cost because it is a special product and it needs careful prep. It is also the only thing that makes paint stick to these surfaces.
We clean the doors with a degreaser, scuff them with fine sandpaper, and wipe off the dust. The bonding primer goes on thin and cures fully before the finish coats. Leave it out and painted melamine will almost certainly peel. On a whole kitchen, it typically adds a few hundred dollars.
Rental units, basement suites and second kitchens often have melamine or laminate. Cabinet painting gives them a clean, updated look for much less than new cabinets.
For rentals, we often suggest a durable two-part finish and a neutral colour. These kitchens take harder use, and a tougher finish means fewer touch-ups between tenants. Small kitchens with twelve to eighteen doors usually cost $1,500 to $2,800.
With these doors, cabinet painting a full kitchen usually still totals $2,500 to $5,500 in Streetsville. Stripping thermofoil or replacing failed doors adds to the cost.
A single replacement door is normally priced in the low hundreds. Stripping vinyl from a full kitchen can add $600 to $1,500. We list each item on the written quote.
When the vinyl skin comes off a thermofoil door, a smooth MDF core is left behind. MDF has no grain, so it takes a sprayed finish very well once it is sealed.
We peel the vinyl, clean off any leftover glue, and seal the edges, which soak up paint faster than the face. Then the door gets primer and the same finish coats as the rest of the kitchen. Many people are surprised that a stripped door can look as good as a new painted one. This is often cheaper than ordering replacement doors, and it keeps the door size and hinge holes the same. Your quote will show whether stripping or replacing makes more sense for each door before any cabinet painting begins.
We check every thermofoil, melamine and laminate door before we give a price, at no cost to you. Call +1 (289) 207-0024, book a door check, or return to the Streetsville home page.
Vanities, pantries, laundry rooms, built-ins and islands are primed and sprayed exactly as Streetsville kitchens are.
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
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 ConsultationWe visit, count every door, check the material and write the scope down for you. You pay nothing for either one.
Tell 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.
