Refacing Kitchen Cabinet Doors

At first I was overwhelmed at the thought of refacing the kitchen cabinet doors in one of our rentals. The cabinets were starting to look their age, but we couldn’t really afford to buy new cabinets. My husband thought we could reface the cabinet doors, and that would give the cabinets the face-lift that was much needed. Several years ago my husband and I began investing in rental properties. Without fail the kitchens in these properties needed a face lift; and the easiest way we found of achieving this, was to reface the kitchen cabinet doors. Usually re-doing the kitchen cabinets and their doors was always my job because I like doing what tends to be tedious work.

Sometimes, refacing the kitchen cabinet doors was just a matter of a new paint job. If it was decided to re-do the cabinets in this way the first thing I did was take the doors off the hinges, then sand and clean them. If the doors were just to be painted I didn’t putty the hinge holes because usually I didn’t change the hinges. After I finished sanding I took a damp rag and cleaned off any sawdust and loose particles of old paint. I then re-hung the door and painted it along with the rest of the cabinet unit.

I love porcelain knobs, and I think I have put them in just about all of our units if they didn’t already have them. I always waited to put these on after the paint was dry.

On one of our units I thought that molding would look really nice on the cabinet doors, so I asked my husband if he had the time to miter the edges for me. He said he did, but he would rather I not put molding on the cabinet doors of a rental. He said that they would be harder to clean; thus making our job harder when they needed to be re-done. Not to be discouraged, I decided to paint the molding on.

I went to our local hardware store and bought some blue tape; the kind that is used to tape off cars when they are getting a paint job; it adheres without sticking. I knew when it was pulled off, the tape would not pull off any fresh paint.

I measured, and placed the tape 2 inches in from the edge of the cabinet door. I then measured and taped in 3/4 of an inch in from the first row of tape. That made the strip the same size as the molding I would have put on. I got a few shades darker of the same color that I had painted the cabinet doors. After that dried, I took an old eyeliner brush; and with a color a few shades darker than the strip, I went around the edges and intermittently through the middle of the strip to give it the depth of molding. It turned out really nice looking. This method could be used in any color desired for your cabinets.

Once I decided to try something a little different. In one of my magazines I saw an article where a type of appliqu�© was used. I went to Home Depot and got a sheet of veneer, and then cut out the pattern that I wanted. I then sanded the veneer just enough to make it smooth, and painted the appliqu�© a contrasting color from the cabinet door.

After the paint was dry on the appliquÃ?© and door, I turned the appliquÃ?© over and applied a thin layer of Elmer’s wood glue. I turned the glue side down and put it in place. Then I took my small rubber mallet and tapped it down all around. That way it was evenly adhered.

I did the appliqu�© system of refacing only once because it was quite a bit more work to keep it clean, and the maintenance is also more work; but it does look nice.

I am not an artistic person, and usually the work I do, I get the ideas from magazines or the internet. But I have learned that there are just about as many ways to reface a cabinet door as there are stars in the sky.