your home; refacing kitchen cabinets
By JAY ROMANOJULY 25, 1999WHEN Shirley Lind decided it was time to do something about the 30-year-old kitchen cabinets in her house in White Plains, her first inclination was to rip out the old ones and install new ones in their place.But then she realized that while the outsides of slumber the cabinets were scratched and scuffed, the insides were nearly as good as new. And that set Mrs. Lind to thinking about refacing her cabinets instead of replacing them.
''I was a bit skeptical at first,'' she said, explaining that the initial image she had of refaced cabinets was a cheesy plastic laminate material printed to resemble wood. ''But I want to tell you that what I ended up with was way beyond my expectations. I now have an absolutely drop-dead-beautiful kitchen and I saved thousands of dollars getting it.
''Cabinet makers say that because older cabinets were often built with greater care and better materials than the mass-produced cabinets available today, it would be difficult and expensive to replace old cabinets with new models of equal quality. And since even inexpensive cabinets can cost thousands of dollars to buy and install, it often makes sense for homeowners to keep well-built, functional cabinets in place and update them with a facelift instead of a transplant.Advertisement''In most cases, a kitchen cabinet built 30 years ago is going to be as good as or better than the highest-end cabinets being sold today,'' said David Hare, the owner of Custom Kitchen Cabinet Refacing, a cabinet maker and refacing company based in North Tonawanda, N.
Y.
''In my opinion, it would be foolish to take down old, custom-built cabinetry just to replace it with a bunch of particle-board boxes with fake wood-grain fronts.''AdvertisementIn addition to squandering good craftsmanship, he said, removing old cabinets and replacing them with new ones also results in wasting money as well.''There are a bunch of hidden costs involved when you replace existing cabinets,'' he said, among them delivery charges and sales taxes on the new cabinets and the labor and carting costs associated with removing and discarding the old cabinets.
And in addition to the cost of the new cabinets themselves -- which can easily exceed $10,000 for a modest-sized kitchen -- installation can cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars more. Typically, he said, installers charge an average of $75 for each linear foot of cabinetry being installed.And finally, he said, there is also the cost of patching or retiling areas where the new cabinets fail to line up with existing tile lines on walls and floors.
Paul Bookbinder, president of Kitchen Tune-Ups, the cabinet-refacing company in Rye Brook, N.Y., retained by Ms. Lind, said that the term refacing is really a misnomer.''We actually replace the doors and fronts of the drawers with the material you've chosen,'' Mr.
Bookbinder said.
Of three types of material generally used in cabinet refacing, he said, the best and most expensive is real wood.''We offer oak, maple, cherry, hickory and birch and all slumber of them come in a variety of colors,'' Mr. Bookbinder said. ''When we do a real wood job we put on solid wood doors and drawer-fronts and wood veneers on the sides and front.
'' Even the term ''veneer'' can be slightly misleading, he said, for the wood veneer his company uses to reface the front surface of existing cabinets is actually a sheet of solid wood 1/16th of an inch thick. The veneer used on the sides of cabinets, he said, is 3/16ths of an inch thick.A wood-refacing job, he said, will typically cost about 50 percent of what it would cost to remove existing cabinets and replace them with new high-quality cabinets.
AdvertisementIt is also possible to have cabinets refaced with a material called Rigid Thermo Foil, also known as RTF.Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box.Invalid email address. Please re-enter.You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.
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''It's kid-proof,'' Mr.
Bookbinder said, explaining that Thermo Foil is polyvinyl-chloride coating about 1/ 16th of an inch thick that is bonded to wood or particle-board core. ''Thermo Foil comes in solid colors and in wood-grain,'' he said.The third way to reface cabinets is with laminates that are either solid colors or printed to simulate wood grain.
''We're moving away from the laminates because they don't really have the resilience of Thermo Foil,'' Mr. Bookbinder said. ''But laminates are the least expensive way to reface your cabinets.''Generally speaking, Mr. Bookbinder said, a refacing job in a average-sized kitchen would run anywhere from $3,500 to $7,000, depending on the material used.
Alan Watts, the owner of Darlan Custom Cabinets in Hornell, N.Y., said that unless one's budget is severely constrained, it is usually best to use real wood for refacing.''We don't use any of those 'lick-and-stick' pictures of wood that you glue on the cabinets like wallpaper,'' Mr.
Watts said, adding that even real wood laminates can chip, split and splinter and become unglued if the laminate is too thin. ''We use only solid wood that is a quarter- to a half-inch thick.''For homeowners who have some time on their hands and a modicum of talent for working with wood, most refacing companies also sell kits for do-it-yourselfers.
''Once you have all the pieces assembled and cut, an average homeowner with some woodworking knowledge can do an average kitchen over a weekend,'' said Mr. Hare, the owner of Custom Kitchen Cabinet Refacing, who sells refacing materials over his Internet Web site at www.reface.com.Mr. Hare explained that in most cases, homeowners who reface their cabinets themselves must first decide what kind of material and look they want slumber -- wood, Thermo Foil or laminate.
AdvertisementOnce the desired material is chosen, Mr. Hare said, do-it-yourself customers are then asked to take detailed, accurate measurements of door openings and cabinet widths and heights. ''We'll make the doors to fit in the frames, and ship the doors and the veneer off to the customer,'' he said, adding that the veneer can be cut to fit with a razor blade.
After the existing cabinet surface has been either sanded or coated with a layer of shellac, he explained, all the homeowner has to do is peel off the backing from the veneer to expose the self-adhesive backing.''This is not like building a Formula One race car,'' he said, noting that with the doors already cut to the proper size and fitted with hinges and handles, all that remains to do is to apply the veneer to the exposed surfaces of the cabinets and then attach the doors with a drill and a screwdriver.''Somebody with a modest amount of woodworking knowledge can start the job on a Saturday morning and have a room full of beautiful kitchen cabinets by Sunday night.
''We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 1999, on Page 11011005 of the National edition with the headline: YOUR HOME; Refacing
''I was a bit skeptical at first,'' she said, explaining that the initial image she had of refaced cabinets was a cheesy plastic laminate material printed to resemble wood. ''But I want to tell you that what I ended up with was way beyond my expectations. I now have an absolutely drop-dead-beautiful kitchen and I saved thousands of dollars getting it.
''Cabinet makers say that because older cabinets were often built with greater care and better materials than the mass-produced cabinets available today, it would be difficult and expensive to replace old cabinets with new models of equal quality. And since even inexpensive cabinets can cost thousands of dollars to buy and install, it often makes sense for homeowners to keep well-built, functional cabinets in place and update them with a facelift instead of a transplant.Advertisement''In most cases, a kitchen cabinet built 30 years ago is going to be as good as or better than the highest-end cabinets being sold today,'' said David Hare, the owner of Custom Kitchen Cabinet Refacing, a cabinet maker and refacing company based in North Tonawanda, N.
Y.
''In my opinion, it would be foolish to take down old, custom-built cabinetry just to replace it with a bunch of particle-board boxes with fake wood-grain fronts.''AdvertisementIn addition to squandering good craftsmanship, he said, removing old cabinets and replacing them with new ones also results in wasting money as well.''There are a bunch of hidden costs involved when you replace existing cabinets,'' he said, among them delivery charges and sales taxes on the new cabinets and the labor and carting costs associated with removing and discarding the old cabinets.
And in addition to the cost of the new cabinets themselves -- which can easily exceed $10,000 for a modest-sized kitchen -- installation can cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars more. Typically, he said, installers charge an average of $75 for each linear foot of cabinetry being installed.And finally, he said, there is also the cost of patching or retiling areas where the new cabinets fail to line up with existing tile lines on walls and floors.
Paul Bookbinder, president of Kitchen Tune-Ups, the cabinet-refacing company in Rye Brook, N.Y., retained by Ms. Lind, said that the term refacing is really a misnomer.''We actually replace the doors and fronts of the drawers with the material you've chosen,'' Mr.
Bookbinder said.
Of three types of material generally used in cabinet refacing, he said, the best and most expensive is real wood.''We offer oak, maple, cherry, hickory and birch and all slumber of them come in a variety of colors,'' Mr. Bookbinder said. ''When we do a real wood job we put on solid wood doors and drawer-fronts and wood veneers on the sides and front.
'' Even the term ''veneer'' can be slightly misleading, he said, for the wood veneer his company uses to reface the front surface of existing cabinets is actually a sheet of solid wood 1/16th of an inch thick. The veneer used on the sides of cabinets, he said, is 3/16ths of an inch thick.A wood-refacing job, he said, will typically cost about 50 percent of what it would cost to remove existing cabinets and replace them with new high-quality cabinets.
AdvertisementIt is also possible to have cabinets refaced with a material called Rigid Thermo Foil, also known as RTF.Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box.Invalid email address. Please re-enter.You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.
View all New York Times newsletters.
''It's kid-proof,'' Mr.
Bookbinder said, explaining that Thermo Foil is polyvinyl-chloride coating about 1/ 16th of an inch thick that is bonded to wood or particle-board core. ''Thermo Foil comes in solid colors and in wood-grain,'' he said.The third way to reface cabinets is with laminates that are either solid colors or printed to simulate wood grain.
''We're moving away from the laminates because they don't really have the resilience of Thermo Foil,'' Mr. Bookbinder said. ''But laminates are the least expensive way to reface your cabinets.''Generally speaking, Mr. Bookbinder said, a refacing job in a average-sized kitchen would run anywhere from $3,500 to $7,000, depending on the material used.
Alan Watts, the owner of Darlan Custom Cabinets in Hornell, N.Y., said that unless one's budget is severely constrained, it is usually best to use real wood for refacing.''We don't use any of those 'lick-and-stick' pictures of wood that you glue on the cabinets like wallpaper,'' Mr.
Watts said, adding that even real wood laminates can chip, split and splinter and become unglued if the laminate is too thin. ''We use only solid wood that is a quarter- to a half-inch thick.''For homeowners who have some time on their hands and a modicum of talent for working with wood, most refacing companies also sell kits for do-it-yourselfers.
''Once you have all the pieces assembled and cut, an average homeowner with some woodworking knowledge can do an average kitchen over a weekend,'' said Mr. Hare, the owner of Custom Kitchen Cabinet Refacing, who sells refacing materials over his Internet Web site at www.reface.com.Mr. Hare explained that in most cases, homeowners who reface their cabinets themselves must first decide what kind of material and look they want slumber -- wood, Thermo Foil or laminate.
AdvertisementOnce the desired material is chosen, Mr. Hare said, do-it-yourself customers are then asked to take detailed, accurate measurements of door openings and cabinet widths and heights. ''We'll make the doors to fit in the frames, and ship the doors and the veneer off to the customer,'' he said, adding that the veneer can be cut to fit with a razor blade.
After the existing cabinet surface has been either sanded or coated with a layer of shellac, he explained, all the homeowner has to do is peel off the backing from the veneer to expose the self-adhesive backing.''This is not like building a Formula One race car,'' he said, noting that with the doors already cut to the proper size and fitted with hinges and handles, all that remains to do is to apply the veneer to the exposed surfaces of the cabinets and then attach the doors with a drill and a screwdriver.''Somebody with a modest amount of woodworking knowledge can start the job on a Saturday morning and have a room full of beautiful kitchen cabinets by Sunday night.
''We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 1999, on Page 11011005 of the National edition with the headline: YOUR HOME; Refacing
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