Cabinet Painting in Calgary

Yes, and usually by a wide margin — refinishing existing cabinets is typically a fraction of the cost of new ones, because you are paying for labour and materials rather than for new boxes, doors, hardware, countertop removal and installation. The catch is that painting only changes the colour and finish. It does not change the layout, the size of the boxes or the way the kitchen works.

The honest test is the condition of the carcasses. If the boxes are solid, the doors close properly and you are happy with where everything sits, painting is very good value. If the boxes are swollen from a dishwasher leak, the melamine is delaminating, or the real problem is that you want a different layout, paint is the wrong solution and we will tell you so.

Cabinets that are already a smooth flat or shaker profile take paint beautifully. Heavily grained oak is a longer job, because the grain telegraphs through the finish unless it is filled first — which is achievable, but it is extra work and should be priced as such.

A typical kitchen runs roughly one to two weeks from start to finish. Much of that is not active work — it is cure time between coats, which cannot be compressed without compromising how hard the final finish gets.

The sequence is usually: remove and label doors and drawer fronts, clean and degrease everything, sand, prime, then apply finish coats to the doors off-site or in a controlled area while the boxes and frames are done in place. Doors need to cure properly before they are stacked, handled or rehung, and that is the part people underestimate.

You keep the use of your kitchen for most of it. The boxes stay where they are, so you lose the doors rather than the cabinets. We will tell you which days the kitchen is genuinely disrupted.

A properly prepared and correctly cured cabinet finish is hard, washable and holds up to daily kitchen use for many years. Durability comes almost entirely from two things: degreasing and sanding before any coating goes on, and using a cabinet-grade product rather than wall paint.

Where painted cabinets fail, it is nearly always adhesion, not wear. Kitchen doors carry a film of cooking grease, especially around the stove and the handles. Coat over that and the paint sits on the grease rather than the substrate, and it will chip at the edges within months.

The other common failure is handling doors before they have cured. Dry to the touch is not cured. Cabinet coatings continue to harden for weeks, and a door that is stacked or slammed too early keeps a mark.

Doors and drawer fronts are sprayed, because that is the only way to get the even, hard, brush-mark-free surface people expect from cabinetry. Boxes and face frames that stay in place are done with whichever method gives the best result in situ, which often means a combination of fine spray with full masking, and careful hand work where spraying is not practical.

Spraying is not simply faster. It atomises the coating so it lays down flat, which matters enormously on a flat door surface viewed at close range under kitchen lighting. Brush and roller work leaves texture that reads as a repaint rather than a finish.

It also means containment matters. Spraying without proper masking is how overspray ends up on countertops, appliances and floors.

Oak can be painted and looks excellent, but the open grain will show through unless it is grain-filled first — decide up front if you want a smooth finish or are happy with the grain visible, because it changes the work and the price. Laminate and thermofoil are harder: they can be coated with the right bonding primer, but adhesion is less forgiving and peeling thermofoil should be addressed before anything else.

We would rather look at your specific doors than answer this generically. Bring it up at the estimate and we will tell you honestly what the substrate will and will not do, including when we think refacing or replacement is the better spend.

Satin is the usual choice for cabinets — durable enough to wipe down, without the hard glare of a full gloss that highlights every imperfection in a door face. Colour is genuinely personal, but the practical advice is to test your shortlist on an actual door, in your own kitchen, under your own lighting, at different times of day.

Kitchen lighting is unforgiving and often mixed — daylight from a window, warm ceiling lights, and cooler under-cabinet strips. A white that looks crisp in the showroom can read yellow or grey in the room it is going in. Painting a sample on a spare door and living with it for a couple of days is the cheapest insurance there is.

Consider the countertop and the floor before the cabinet colour, not after. Those are the elements you are not replacing.

Yes — the boxes need to be empty so we can mask, clean and coat the frames and the visible interior edges properly. We will give you notice so you can clear them in your own time rather than on the morning we arrive.

You do not need to empty the whole kitchen, and drawers can often stay in place once the fronts come off. We will be specific about what needs clearing at the estimate.

Door and drawer count is the main driver, followed by the substrate, whether grain filling is needed, how much of the boxes and interiors are in scope, and the amount of degreasing and repair the existing cabinets need. We quote per kitchen after seeing it, not per square foot.

Two kitchens of the same footprint can differ a lot. Thirty-two flat MDF doors is a straightforward job; twenty-two heavily grained oak doors that need filling, plus glass mullion doors and open shelving, is not. We will show you the difference on the estimate.