Cabinets are the highest-return painting job in a house and the least forgiving. Kitchen cabinets carry years of cooking grease, and anything sprayed over that will peel at the handles within a season. The work is degreasing, deglossing, sanding and priming with a bonding primer, then spraying rather than brushing so a flat door reads flat. Doors come off and get labelled so they go back where they started. A refinish runs a fraction of replacement and takes days rather than weeks.
Scoped in writing before anything is booked, with the surfaces, the products and the number of coats named so you can compare it against anything else you have been quoted.
The Lake County painting year
Interior work runs every month. Exterior is weather dependent, so the spring slots go first.
Before you book
Not every kitchen should be refinished, and it is cheaper for everyone if that gets said at the walk rather than after the doors are off. The thing that decides it is what the doors are made of, not how old they look.
Solid wood doors and solid wood frames refinish well almost regardless of age. Lake County has a lot of houses built between the 1950s and the 1990s with solid oak or maple kitchens, and those are the best candidates on the board. The grain shows through paint on open-grain oak unless it is grain-filled first, so if you want a dead-flat modern door out of an oak kitchen, that is an extra step and it needs to be priced in rather than discovered halfway through.
MDF doors with a painted or primed face refinish well too, and they spray flatter than wood does because there is no grain to fight.
Thermofoil is the one to watch. It is a vinyl skin heat-wrapped over MDF, and it is common in kitchens fitted from the late 1990s onward. Where the skin is still fully bonded it can be prepped and coated. Where it has started lifting at a corner or bubbling near the oven or the dishwasher, paint will not fix it and will not hold it down. Those doors either get replaced or the kitchen gets a different plan.
Laminate boxes with solid wood doors are a common Lake County combination and they are fine. The boxes take a bonding primer, the doors get the full treatment, and the two end up matching.
If you are not sure which you have, text a photo of an open door showing the edge and the back. The edge tells us more than the front does.
Products
A cabinet finish has to do something wall paint never has to do. It gets touched with wet hands, hit with cabinet doors closing against it, wiped with cleaners, and steamed from a kettle or a dishwasher vent several times a day. Wall paint on a cabinet door fails at the handles first, then along the top edge of the drawer fronts, and it usually happens inside a year.
The build is a bonding primer over properly degreased and deglossed surfaces, then a cabinet-grade topcoat sprayed in thin coats rather than laid on thick. Two thin coats cure harder than one heavy one, and a heavy coat on a horizontal drawer front is where you get soft spots that mark under a fingernail weeks later.
Waterborne alkyds and cabinet-specific enamels are what we work with. They level out to a smooth face without the brush texture of a wall paint, and they harden over a few weeks rather than staying soft. That cure window is real and it is worth planning around, which is covered further down.
The sheen matters more on cabinets than anywhere else in a house. Satin hides more and cleans well. A higher sheen looks sharper in a showroom and shows every wave in a door that was not sanded flat. We will tell you which one your doors can carry.
Whichever products end up on your kitchen, they get named in the written scope with the number of coats, so you can compare it against anything else you have been quoted rather than comparing two prices with nothing underneath them.
Pricing
Cabinet quotes vary more between two similar-looking kitchens than almost any other painting job, and it is not arbitrary. These are the things that actually move it.
Door and drawer count. This is the main driver. The boxes are a smaller part of the work than people expect. A kitchen with a lot of small drawers takes longer than a kitchen with the same footprint and fewer, larger doors.
Condition of the existing finish. A kitchen that has already been painted once, badly, is more work than a factory-finished kitchen that has never been touched. Peeling or soft previous coats have to come off rather than be coated over.
Grease. The area around the range and the run above the dishwasher is where refinishes fail. Heavy build-up means more degreasing time before anything else can start.
Grain fill. Open-grain oak taken to a flat modern finish needs filling and extra sanding. Oak kept as visible grain does not.
Spray location. Doors sprayed off site come back flatter and keep the dust out of your house. That is the default where there is somewhere to take them.
Hardware changes. Refitting existing hardware is quick. New hardware with a different hole spacing means filling and re-drilling every door.
You get all of this in writing before anything is booked. Our pricing page covers how we work the numbers out across the rest of the services.
Timeline
The honest answer is that the kitchen is usable for most of it, and there is a stretch in the middle where it is not.
Day one is doors and drawer fronts off, labelled, and away. Hardware comes off with them. From that point you have open shelving and working drawers, which most families manage fine.
The boxes and frames get degreased, deglossed, sanded and masked in place. That is the noisy, dusty part and it is usually a day or two depending on the size of the kitchen. The sink and the appliances stay usable.
Doors and fronts get sprayed off site while that is happening. They need to sit flat and cure between coats, which is why the door side of the job runs on its own clock and cannot be rushed by adding people to it.
Rehang is the last day. Doors go back on the boxes they came off, hardware goes back or new hardware goes on, and we walk the finished kitchen with you under the lights you actually use at night rather than in the middle of the afternoon.
After that there is a cure window. The finish is dry to touch quickly but keeps hardening for a few weeks. Be gentle with the doors for the first fortnight, do not stack anything against a fresh face, and leave heavy cleaning until the end of the month. That is the single biggest thing a homeowner can do to make a cabinet finish last.
Winter is the best time to book this. Interior work runs every month in Lake County, and January to March is when the exterior side of the calendar is quiet and cabinet slots are easiest to get.
How it works
We look at the surfaces, not just the rooms. Prep is what the number is built from, so it is what gets measured.
You get the surfaces, the products, the number of coats and the price in writing before anything is booked.
Interior any month. Exterior inside the season, not squeezed into the end of it.
We walk the finished work with you under real light and fix anything on the list before the final invoice.
By town
Towns we serve
Service area
Text a photo of the room or the elevation and we will scope it, or call and we will walk it through with you.
Questions
By surface area and by the amount of preparation the surfaces need, which is the part that varies most between two houses that look similar. A wall that needs washing, filling, sanding and priming is several times the work of one that needs a coat. You get the scope in writing — surfaces, products, number of coats — so you can compare quotes on the same basis rather than on a single number.
Interior work runs all year, and January through March is the easiest time of year to book. Exterior work is weather dependent and needs surface temperature and dryness within range, so it runs roughly April through October in Lake County. We would rather tell you to wait for spring than put a coat on in November that fails by summer.
A single room is usually a day or two. A whole-house interior runs one to two weeks depending on how much trim and how much prep. A full exterior is typically one to two weeks, and the weather decides more than the crew does. You get a schedule up front, and you are told when it moves.
No. Interior work is done room by room so the house stays livable, and each room is put back at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job. If a kitchen is being refinished you will lose the use of the cabinets for a few days, and we plan that with you rather than around you.
Usually three to five days. Doors and drawer fronts come off and are sprayed away from the house, while the boxes are prepped and finished in place. You keep the use of the cabinet interiors for most of that; the doors go back at the end.
Text a photo of the room or the elevation and we will scope it. Fastest way to a number.
Text a photoCall (224) 944-8652