Kitchen cabinet dilemma

[John TenEyck]

Refacing the face frames is not hard; I've done it a couple of times and finished them by hand to avoid having to think about how to control the spray mess. I made end panels to match the new doors and drawer fronts and attached those to the ends that showed with screws from the inside. New doors and drawer fronts to your liking, or paint the ones you have. If it's a short term fix, say 5 years, I could live with a less than perfect paint job, which it will be because filling the grain on oak is not an easy task. But I happen to like it when the grain shows through so I might be happy for a lot longer, although I hate tombstone doors.

John

[Rick Potter]

Golden oak must be ready for a comeback.

Just today we saw a remodel show where they used 4" white tile in the kitchen.

[Bill Bukovec]

We are going through the same thing. After two years of looking into options, I finally convinced my wife to rip it all out and put in Shaker cherry cabinets. That way we get exactly what we want.

[ed vitanovec]

I just made new cabinets for my tiny Kitchen, I made the upper cabinets 14" deep. I went with Cherry and did arched raised panels, soft close hinges and full extension soft close sliders. If your cabinets are in good shape make new face frames, Doors and drawer fronts. This route you can change the type of wood.

[Eric D Matson]

I just made new cabinets for my tiny Kitchen, I made the upper cabinets 14" deep. I went with Cherry and did arched raised panels, soft close hinges and full extension soft close sliders. If your cabinets are in good shape make new face frames, Doors and drawer fronts. This route you can change the type of wood.

My cabinets and drawer boxes are in good shape. They were custom when the house was built. A builder built this house to retire in so the house has good bones.

[Dan Baginski]

I’ll be the minority here. I vote for all new cabinets. If they’re that old, the insides are probably pretty worn out. I know ours are. After new doors, drawers, shelves and the effort to replace face frames or sand them down I think it’s best to just do a complete tear out. It’s certainly more expensive but you also get brand new stuff. Of course that depends on your budget.

There’s a company here in Denver that will actually take ikea cabinets and replace the fronts with any solid wood you want. Cheaper than going with normal cabinets, but I don’t know if they’re just a local company or ship across country.

[Neil Gaskin]

We run into this often. There are a lot of options that do not involve complete replacement. The least expensive is to refinish in a darker color. While it’s technically possible to paint red oak it doesn’t look good in my opinion. The grain shows through too much. You can replace doors and drawers if you would like to change the style.

[Robert Engel]

I personally prefer to make doors and drawer fronts because I'm very anal about grain and color match, however.

I hear you.

You know, I've found more often than not, I'm a bit disappointed that nobody notices but me LOL.

[Jim Becker]

Robert, there's no surprise that most folks who are not woodworkers or fine furniture enthusiasts wouldn't necessarily notice things like grain/color match directly, but if they were presented with a side-by-side that they could compare, some percentage would probably notice which was "more harmonious" and the rest still wouldn't get it.

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Ed V...good choice on the deeper uppers. I made that change last year and it's made a huge difference for us.