Guides · 2026-08-11

Cabinet refacing vs replacing: the decision, made honestly

Refacing has a strange reputation: half the people who’d benefit have never heard of it, and half the people who’ve heard of it were pitched a cheap thermofoil version in the 90s and rightly walked away. Done properly, it’s the best value in cabinetry - when the boxes deserve it. Here’s how to tell.

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. What stays is the structure - the boxes screwed to your walls and the counters sitting on them (which can stay in place, a real savings on stone).

A refaced kitchen with shop-built doors is visually indistinguishable from a replaced one. That’s not a sales line; it’s the reason the option exists.

The checklist: reface if…

• The boxes are square and solid. Doors racked out of alignment can be hardware; boxes racked out of square are structure. Open a corner cabinet and look at the joints.
• Shelves aren’t sagging and the backs are attached firmly.
• 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. If the problem is where the cabinets are rather than what they look like, refacing polishes a layout you’ll still hate.
• You’d keep the counters or replace them anyway - either works.

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
• Interior upgrades - drawer banks everywhere, pullouts throughout - would mean rebuilding most boxes anyway

The money, plainly

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 - keeping your existing doors and respraying the finish - is cheaper still, and right when the doors themselves are solid wood in a style you like. The refacing page covers the difference.

The one-visit answer

A measure visit settles the question in an hour: boxes inspected, an honest verdict, and a written number for whichever path fits. If the answer is “these boxes aren’t worth new doors,” you want to hear that before the doors are built - which is exactly the order we do it in.