A refacing job keeps the cabinet boxes and the layout, then replaces everything the customer sees: doors, drawer fronts, pulls, and the finish on the face frames and end panels around them. The boxes have to be worth keeping, and the fronts have to be sized to the door arrangement you settle on before you order. The order of work runs from the box check to the final swing test.
Kitchen cabinet refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts on cabinets whose boxes stay in place, and it usually includes a matching treatment for the cabinet surfaces that stay visible around them. On a frameless run with full overlay doors, that treatment might be limited to the finished ends. On a face-frame kitchen with partial overlay or inset doors, the frames show around every door, so they get veneer or paint that matches the new fronts. Quoting a door swap alone on a face-frame kitchen leaves the customer looking at old frames beside new doors.
Refinishing keeps the existing doors and fronts and strips or recoats them, which changes the color and nothing else. Full replacement removes the boxes too, and it's the route when the layout changes or the boxes have failed. Our guide to refacing versus replacing the cabinets covers that decision for a specific kitchen.
"Resurfacing" has no fixed meaning in the trade. Some people mean veneering the frames, some mean painting the boxes, some mean a full reface. When a customer uses the word, ask what work they expect on the doors, the fronts, and the visible cabinet surfaces, and write that scope down.
Walk the run with a flashlight and a level and look at the boxes as structure. Open every door and pull every drawer. You're looking for:
Separate cosmetic preparation from repair. Filling a chipped edge, sanding a rough frame, and re-driving a stripped screw are prep work and belong in the refacing job. A box that has racked, come loose from the wall, or lost material to water needs its own fix, and the fix depends on how that box was built and hung. If an opening isn't square, decide whether to repair the box, replace that box, or accept a wider reveal on that door, and price the decision before the fronts are on order.
Check the drawer boxes, shelves, and slides during the same walk. Sound drawer boxes on working slides stay, and the new front goes on the old box. Worn slides or broken boxes are a separate upgrade you can offer, and they change what you order, so keep that line apart from the refacing quote.
Once the boxes pass, turn the run into a list. Give every opening an identifier, write it on tape inside the box, and record whether the opening takes a door, a drawer front, or both, the opening size, and what sits beside it. Keep doors, drawer fronts, and drawer boxes as three separate columns. A drawer front is a flat panel with no hinge boring that fastens to a box; order it as a door and it arrives with cup holes.
Settle the door arrangement before you settle the sizes. Overlay is a project choice, and it decides how big every door is. A like-for-like replacement keeps the current overlay and the current hinge type, so the new doors match the old ones in size. Moving from partial overlay to full overlay on a face-frame kitchen changes every door dimension and the hinge along with it. Pick the hinge for the box construction and the overlay you want, then confirm that doors at an inside corner, a wall, or an appliance can open with it. The sizing formulas for each configuration are on our door measuring instructions; what an order needs is the finished door and front dimension for each opening, since the opening size alone doesn't set the overlay.
Plan the exposed surfaces on the same list. Note every face frame, finished end, toe kick, and piece of trim the customer will see, and decide how each one gets its finish: veneer, paint, or a replacement panel. Decide before you buy material, because a painted frame beside a stained door reads as a mistake, and matching a veneer species and a stain to a door you haven't seen yet is guesswork.
If the fronts a supplier stocks match your measured list, they'll do the job. If the list has a 13-3/8 inch door next to a 22-1/2 inch one, made-to-order fronts avoid shims and filler strips. For example, when you order with us, you give the finished dimensions of each door and front, choose unfinished or primed, and specify the hinge boring to match the hinges you've already picked, so the parts arrive ready for the plan you made.
On a like-for-like reface, the best measuring reference in the kitchen is the doors you're throwing away. If the arrangement and overlay are staying the same, the old door already encodes the answer - its finished size is the finished size, no opening math, no overlay arithmetic, no chance of re-deriving a number the original builder already solved. Measure from the back of the door, not the face: outside edge profiles round and ease the face edges, so a tape run across the front reads short, while the back is a flat, square surface that gives the true dimension. The one caveat is to clone only doors that fit - a door that rubs or shows a bad reveal is a mistake you'd be reordering, so for those openings, go back to the opening and do the math fresh.
On hinges, our recommendation for a reface is simple: don't put old hardware on new doors. Hinges have come a long way - integrated soft close, tool-free mounting, finer three-way adjustment - and every hinge in our catalog is a Blum with BLUMOTION soft close built in, which on its own reads as an upgrade the customer feels every time a door shuts. The math favors it too: hinges are a small line on a refacing job, and a worn hinge transferred to a fresh door makes the new kitchen close like the old one. Decide the hinge before the door order either way, because the boring is matched to the hinge setup - tell us your cabinet type and overlay, order the doors bored with the matching hinges, and the run arrives ready to hang as one system.
The quote is the sum of the actual work, and the number moves with:
Schedule the job in stages: measure and order, prep the boxes and exposed surfaces while the fronts ship, finish the fronts, then install and check. Delivery dates come from the supplier's order confirmation, and cure times come from the finish and adhesive sheets. Keeping the boxes removes the demolition, disposal, and box installation that a replacement job carries, which is why a reface prices below a replacement on the same kitchen.
Before you call the job done, look at the whole run from across the room, then up close.
Fix a lifting veneer edge or a finish flaw with the product's own repair method before the customer sees it. Then hand over the care sheet for the finish you used: what to clean it with, what to keep off it, and how soon it can take daily use, which depends on that coating's cure time.
The job goes right when the boxes are sound, the exposed-surface plan is settled, every door and front is measured to its finished dimension, and the hinges match the overlay. Eagle Woodworking makes doors and drawer fronts to your finished dimensions, unfinished or primed, with hinge boring to match the hardware you've chosen. When the scope is set, order custom cabinet doors for your refacing project through our online form.
The calendar depends on four stages. Measuring and ordering takes a site visit and the time to check the list. Delivery is whatever the supplier confirms on the order. Box prep and veneer or paint on the frames can happen while the fronts are in transit. Finishing the fronts takes as many coats and cure days as the finish system needs, and installation scales with the number of doors and how much adjustment the openings need.
Yes, if you can measure to a sixteenth, prepare a surface the way a coating or adhesive sheet requires, and hang a door and adjust a hinge until the reveals match. A kitchen with sound boxes, a like-for-like overlay, and a small door count is a reasonable first job. Water damage or a change of overlay makes it a harder one.
Yes, when the drawer is a four-sided box with a separate front screwed to it. Remove the old front, position the new one on the reveals, secure it from inside, and check the travel. If the front you're looking at is also the drawer's front wall, there's no box behind it to attach to, and removing it leaves a three-sided drawer. Those drawers need a new box or a front built to serve as the front wall.
Reuse them when they work smoothly, aren't corroded or bent, and match the door arrangement you're keeping. A hinge is made for one overlay, one door thickness, and one drilling pattern. If the new doors keep the same overlay and thickness and the boring matches, the old hinges go back on. If the overlay changes, or the new doors are bored differently, the old hinges won't line up, and new ones are part of the order.
They can, when the boxes are structurally sound and the surfaces you're covering are intact. Adhesion decides it: veneer and paint bond to some existing finishes and not others, so test the adhesive or primer on a hidden spot and follow that product's instructions for the substrate. Swollen MDF at a sink base or laminate that's peeling from the edges won't hold a new surface and belongs in the repair or replacement column.