Guides · 2026-08-11

Cabinet refacing vs replacing: how to tell which your kitchen needs

Half the people who would benefit from refacing have never heard of it. Most of the other half got pitched a cheap thermofoil version in the 90s and walked away, reasonably. Done with shop-built doors, refacing is the best value in cabinetry when the boxes underneath deserve it. The whole question is whether yours do.

What refacing actually replaces

Everything you see and touch: new doors, new drawer fronts, new hinges and slides, new hardware, and matching wood veneer over every visible box face and end panel. The structure stays. The boxes remain screwed to your walls, and the counters sitting on them can stay in place, which is a real savings on stone.

A refaced kitchen with shop-built doors looks the same as a replaced one. That is the reason the option exists.

The checklist: reface if…

• The boxes are square and solid. Doors racked out of alignment can be a hinge problem. Boxes racked out of square are structure. Open a corner cabinet and look at the joints.
• Shelves aren’t sagging and the backs are firmly attached.
• No water history. Look under the sink base: swollen, crumbly particleboard means that box is done.
• The layout works. Refacing keeps your layout by definition, so if the problem is where the cabinets are rather than what they look like, refacing polishes a layout you’ll still hate.
• The counters are either staying or getting replaced anyway.

Replace instead if…

• Water damage has gotten into more than one box
• The boxes are low-grade particleboard already failing at the joints
• You want a new layout, an island, or walls opened up
• You want drawer banks and pullouts throughout, which means rebuilding most of the boxes anyway

The money

For the same Marion kitchen, expect refacing to run 40-60% of replacement. A kitchen that would cost $25,000 to replace typically refaces for $10,000-$14,000 with shop-built doors. The savings are real because the boxes and their installation, roughly half the work, already happened years ago on someone else’s invoice.

Refinishing keeps your existing doors and resprays the finish. It’s cheaper still, and right when the doors are solid wood in a style you like. The refacing page covers the difference.

The one-visit answer

A measure visit settles it in about an hour: boxes inspected, a straight verdict, and a written number for whichever path fits. If the boxes aren’t worth new doors, you want to hear that before any doors get built. Ask whoever quotes you to open the sink base and tell you what they see.