Cabinet Painting Questions From Oshawa Homeowners

Base and upper cabinets have to be emptied before any cabinet painting begins, because the carcasses get sanded and sprayed inside sealed plastic. Drawers can usually stay loaded if their fronts are the only part being painted, though we will say so at the visit. Countertops need to be clear, and small appliances are best moved to another room for the week.

Interiors can be done and they are quoted separately, because cabinet painting the insides roughly doubles the surface area. Most kitchens leave the interiors as they are and only the visible edges of the openings get coated. Where the shelving is stained and the doors are going white, doing the insides is usually worth it.

Either, and it is decided at the quote. Hinges in good order are cleaned and reused, sagging ones are swapped for soft-close units at a modest cost, and handles are often changed because the kitchen is already apart. Old holes are filled and sprayed over so nothing shows.

They do not, and most kitchens now take a cabinet painting colour that is deliberately different from the trim. A warm white cabinet against a cooler white trim looks intentional when there is a clear gap between the two, and muddy when the two are nearly the same. We check that pairing during the colour visit.

Sprayed cabinet painting takes more setup, more masking and more containment, and the doors have to be transported, racked and stacked flat. That labour is what the extra money buys. What comes back is a level film with no brush marks, and that is the difference people see when they stand at the counter.

Refinishing keeps the wood visible by stripping or sanding the old clear coat, applying a new stain and spraying fresh clear coats over it. Repainting covers the wood with primer and opaque topcoats in a colour. Refinishing only works on wood worth showing, while cabinet painting works on almost any sound surface.

Cabinet painting with waterborne products carries low VOC levels and the smell is mild compared with the solvent lacquers used twenty years ago. An extraction fan pulls air out of the work zone while the carcasses are coated, and every door is finished off site, so most of the odour never reaches the house. Sensitive households can have the windows managed around the box coats.

Winter is a good season for cabinet painting. The doors are sprayed in a heated, humidity-controlled booth regardless of what is happening outside, and indoor work is unaffected by snow. Summer is actually the harder season, because humidity above about seventy per cent slows some waterborne products down.

The kitchen can be used the day the doors go back on, with some care. Waterborne alkyd enamels want about a week before heavy use and keep hardening for roughly a month, while two-component polyurethanes are hard within a day. Avoid abrasive pads and standing water on door edges during the first few weeks.

A chip or a scratch on a sprayed door can be spot-repaired, and small touch-ups are straightforward in the first year while the batch is still matched. Deeper damage means the door goes back through the booth for a full recoat. Any repair beyond a touch-up is assessed in person and priced in writing.

A deposit confirms the date and the balance falls due when the job is finished and walked through. The amounts are written on the quote before anything is agreed. Nothing is charged before the free visit, and the quote itself costs nothing.

The regular service area runs east to Courtice, Hampton, Bowmanville, Newcastle and Orono, and north on Highway 7A to Port Perry and Blackstock, with Columbus and Raglan inside the city limits. Jobs further out are considered case by case. Travel is included in the quoted price within that area.