Cabinet Refacing vs Painting: Real Windsor Costs for Both

Every week, somebody asks me about refacing. Usually it happens halfway through a quote, at a kitchen table somewhere in Windsor-Essex: "My neighbour got their cabinets refaced — should we do that instead?" It's a fair question, and most contractors will dodge it because the honest answer sometimes means losing the job. I'd rather give you the real numbers for all three options — refacing, painting, and full replacement — and let you decide.

What Refacing Actually Is (Most People Don't Know)

When I ask homeowners what they think refacing means, I get a different answer every time. Here's what it actually is: the refacing company keeps your existing cabinet boxes — the frames screwed to the wall — and replaces every door and drawer front with brand-new ones. Then they cover the exposed faces and sides of the boxes with a matching veneer or laminate skin so everything looks consistent. New hinges, usually new hardware, done.

So you get new doors in whatever style you pick, but the boxes underneath are the same ones you have now. That's the key thing to understand. Refacing doesn't fix a failing cabinet. If your boxes are swollen, sagging, or coming apart, refacing is putting a new jacket on a broken frame — and a good refacing company will tell you that too.

The Real Costs in Windsor-Essex (2026)

Here's what these three options actually run in our market. Not national averages from some American website — what I see quoted in Windsor, LaSalle, Tecumseh, and the county.

To break my own pricing down further, because vague ranges annoy me as much as they annoy you — in 2026 I charge $2,800–$3,400 for a small kitchen (12–18 doors and drawers), $3,500–$4,500 for a standard kitchen (22–28), $4,500–$5,500 for a large one (30–38), and $5,500–$7,500+ for the really big XL kitchens with 40 or more pieces. That's a flat-rate written quote I hand you on-site, within the hour. No "starting at" games, no surprise extras on the invoice.

When Refacing Genuinely Wins

I send people to refacing companies. Not often, but it happens, and here's when it's the right call:

Your doors are physically beyond saving. Cracked frames, thermofoil skins peeling off MDF, deep water damage along the bottom rails. I can fix a lot in the shop, but I can't resurrect a door that's structurally done. If the boxes are still solid, refacing replaces exactly the part that failed.

You want a different door style.Paint changes colour, not shape. If you have raised-panel cathedral doors and you've got your heart set on a flat shaker profile, no sprayer on earth gets you there. Refacing swaps the profile entirely — that's its real superpower.

The boxes are good but the fronts are wrong. Some kitchens have perfectly sound boxes wearing doors that never suited the house. New fronts on old bones is precisely what refacing was invented for.

A good refacing job is real work done by skilled tradespeople. When it fits, it fits, and I'll say so standing in your kitchen.

When Painting Wins

Here's the honest pattern: in most of the kitchens I quote, the doors are structurally fine. They're just dated. And if the door is sound, paying $8,000–$15,000 to replace it with a new door — or $15,000–$30,000+ to replace the whole kitchen — is solving a cosmetic problem with a structural budget.

This region is full of kitchens built better than most new stock. The 1950s–70s solid oak kitchens all over South Windsor and Riverside were built to outlive the house. Those doors don't need replacing; they need the orange-oak look gone. Oak's heavy grain telegraphs through paint if you skip steps, which is why I offer grain-filling as a specialty — it's the difference between "painted oak" and a smooth, factory-looking door.

Painting also wins on timeline, and it's not close. My process takes five working days: Day 1, I protect and prep the kitchen and take your doors to the shop. Day 2 is degreasing and dustless sanding. Day 3, two coats of bonding primer. Day 4, two coats of topcoat — Italian Renner 2K water-based polyurethane, an industrial coating made for cabinets, not a wall paint pretending to be one. Day 5, I reinstall everything, fit the hardware, and walk the kitchen with you. Refacing can't match that, because your new doors have to be manufactured to size before anyone installs anything.

I'm owner-operated and I run one job at a time, so the person who quoted your kitchen is the person spraying it. If you want the full picture of how this works, the complete guide to cabinet painting in Windsor-Essex covers the whole process, and the kitchen cabinet painting service page has the details on what's included.

When You Should Skip Both and Replace

Sometimes I walk into a kitchen, open the sink base, and tell the homeowner not to hire me — or a refacing company. Replacement is the right answer when:

• The boxes are water-damaged.Swollen MDF or particleboard around the sink and dishwasher doesn't recover. Paint hides it for a season; it doesn't fix it.
• The boxes are failing.Sagging shelves, joints letting go, backs pulling off the wall. There's nothing left worth refinishing or refacing.
• You want a different layout.Moving the stove, adding an island, stealing space from a closet — that's a renovation, not a refinish.

I wrote more about that decision in cabinet painting vs replacement, but the short version is: I'd rather lose a job than spray a kitchen that needed a contractor instead.

A Warning About the $1,500 Cabinet Quote

While we're being honest about money: if someone quotes you $1,500 to "paint your kitchen cabinets," ask exactly what that buys. Almost every time, it's rolled-on latex wall paint, no degreasing, no primer, doors painted in place with the hinges on. Kitchen grease is the enemy of adhesion — skip the degrease and the prep, and the finish starts peeling around the handles and the sink within a year. Then you're paying twice: once for the cheap job, once for someone to strip it and do it properly. A real cabinet finish costs what it costs because the prep is most of the work.

How I'd Decide at Your Kitchen Table

Open a cabinet door and look at it like I would. Is the door itself solid — no cracks, no peeling skin, no rot? Painting is on the table, and it's the cheapest path by thousands. Is the door dead but the box behind it solid — or do you hate the door style itself? That's a refacing conversation. Is the box swollen, sagging, or are you redrawing the floor plan? Save your money for replacement.

The house matters too. A century home in Walkerville or Sandwich Town with original solid-wood cabinetry is almost always worth refinishing — those boxes will outlast anything you could buy today. A newer LaSalle or Lakeshore build usually has sound boxes and decent doors that just need colour. The kitchens that genuinely need refacing or replacement are the minority, and I'll tell you straight if yours is one of them.

FAQ

If you're weighing refacing against painting, the fastest way to settle it is to have me look at your actual doors. I've been doing this across Windsor, Amherstburg, LaSalle, Tecumseh, Lakeshore, Essex, Kingsville, Leamington, and Chatham since 2023, and I'll give you a flat-rate written quote on the spot — or tell you honestly that refacing or replacement is the better play for your kitchen. Call or text me at 226-506-0993.