Cabinet Painting Questions From Oakville Homeowners

Yes, and the gap is wide. A painted kitchen here generally lands between $2,500 and $5,500, refacing between roughly $3,000 and $10,000, and new cabinetry inside a full renovation starts near $25,000. Those numbers describe a market. A written quote gives the figure for one kitchen.

Yes, every job is fully insured. The written quote records what each line covers, and it states plainly what falls outside it, which is mostly impact damage, abrasive cleaning and water left standing against a cabinet base. Anything unclear gets answered at the visit, before work begins.

Both count as ordinary cabinet painting rather than favours. Six to ten pieces on an island run a few days and change an open-plan room entirely. One vanity runs a day or two. Each can stand alone or ride on a kitchen quote, where sharing the setup brings the price down.

Nearly all professional cabinet painting uses one of two families. Waterborne alkyd enamel comes as a single component, levels very well, smells mild and is hard enough for daily use inside a week. Two-component polyurethane takes a hardener before it is sprayed, cures within a day and ends up harder than anything else on offer. Ordinary wall paint belongs to neither family, and putting it on cabinetry is the commonest cause of peeling.

In our sequence they do. Spraying takes place with fronts laid flat in a shop whose temperature and humidity are held steady, which is what keeps runs and dust out of the film. Carcasses and frames never move and are coated indoors behind containment, so one job runs in two places at once.

Sound examples of each take cabinet painting well, so long as a bonding primer in waterborne form goes down first and is given its full three or four days to develop adhesion. Thermofoil that has already lifted at an edge is the exception, because paint bonds to the vinyl and the vinyl keeps releasing from the board underneath.

Visits are normally available within a week across Oakville. The job itself typically books two to five weeks out depending on the season, with spring and early fall the busiest. Cabinet painting in a condo takes longer to schedule because the service elevator has to be reserved.

Interiors are included when the quote says they are. Painting them roughly doubles the piece count, so interiors get a separate line and a deliberate decision. Glass-front uppers and open pantry shelving are worth doing; cupboards that stay shut usually are not, and the cabinet painting looks no different from outside.

It gets flagged at the quote, not mid-job. A replacement front is made or bought to match the profile and sprayed in the same batch as everything else, so the colour and sheen match exactly. A door replaced later and painted on its own always reads slightly different.

Not with the products used here. Waterborne enamels and waterborne two-component finishes sit well under Canadian volatile organic compound limits and carry a mild smell rather than a solvent one. Most of the spraying happens off site in any case, and what stays in the house is contained and vented.

Counters first, cabinet painting second, every time. Removing a countertop after cabinet painting chips the frame edge, and tiling a backsplash afterward means grout against a fresh finish. Where a counter is coming off anyway, the timing actually helps, because the top rail sprays cleanly with nothing in the way.

Nothing beyond warm water, a little mild dish soap and a soft cloth. Cream cleansers, abrasive pads, bleach wipes and degreasing sprays each dull or soften cured enamel in time. Across that first month the film goes on hardening, so wipe lightly and shut doors gently rather than swinging them.