Refacing Kitchen Cabinet Doors: A Step by Step Guide

There are many reasons to reface kitchen cabinet doors and some of these reasons are that your cabinet doors are older looking, fading, losing it’s shine, or maybe you are on a budget but want your kitchen to look like new once again. Whatever you reason for wanting to reface the kitchen cabinet doors, this will help you to do it just the right way to give your kitchen that new feeling once again.

First you will need to remove the kitchen cabinet doors by removing all the screws and taking them off the hinges.

Next you will need to sand down all the doors so that it has a smooth surface and if there was any previous paint this should also be removed.

The edges of the doors should be sanded down so that they square off and hang properly. Make sure that you don’t sand too much or else you cause the doors to be uneven or not line up with the others. It is also great to square the cabinet doors off if you are going to be using an edge to the surface or if you will be laminating the doors. Some experts suggest that this not be done if you will be painting the doors instead.

To make the doors stronger so that they do not crack you should fill in all the screw holes with wooden dowel that is coated in wood glue. I also received this recommendation from an expert on home repairs. There will be new holes made later in the project but you defiantly don’t want to use the same holes to put the cabinet doors up since the old ones have cause the doors to weaken in that area over time.

In order to get the finish to set properly you will need to get all the saw dust, dust, and other debris off of the cabinet doors. You can do this with a cloth such as a terry cloth.

There are different types of finishes that you can use when you are refacing the kitchen cabinet doors project and you will need to decide which one is right for you. The different types include paint, laminate, or other types that can be found in your local home repair store, Lowes, or even some ACE Hardware Stores.

Now that you have the cabinet doors refaced you will need to hang them back up. In order to hang the doors back up you must first use something to mark where the hinges and screws will go to get them properly aligned.

One everything has been properly aligned and marked it is time to add the hinges and screws where you need them at. New hinges and screws should be used so that the kitchen cabinet doors will look even better and they won’t be rusted like the old ones probably are.

This project is one of the easiest home projects that I have done and many people are relived to learn that it doesn’t take much knowledge to reface kitchen cabinet doors.