Refacing Versus Replacing Kitchen Cabinets

On a kitchen with swollen or soft cabinet bottoms, refacing is the wrong answer, because new doors cannot hide a box that is failing. The deciding questions are mostly about the carcass (which the notes at kitchen cabinets austin safety in construction show check before any door is chosen), and a quick look under the sink in an Austin, TX kitchen usually answers most of them.

Check the boxes, not the doors

Refacing keeps the existing boxes and replaces the doors, drawer fronts and the skin on the face frame. It works when the boxes are plumb, solid and the layout is already right. Press on the sides and bottoms. A plywood box holds up for decades, while older particleboard and mdf swell when wet and do not shrink back.

Water damage near the sink

The sink base takes the worst of it, from a slow drip at the supply line or a dishwasher hose. Swollen floors in the cabinet, black staining on the back and a soft toe kick all point to replacement for that run. A single damaged base can be replaced alone, and the rest refaced, but the new box has to match the old face frame height.

Shelves, drawers and hardware

A shelf that has bowed under weight will bow again with new doors on the front. Old drawer boxes with stapled corners and a center-mount drawer slide can be swapped for a dovetail drawer on a full-extension slide, and refacing jobs often include that swap. Hinges move to a soft close euro hinge when the doors change.

What refacing cannot change

Layout stays the same. A range wall that is too short, a corner with a dead blind space or a pantry in the wrong spot are problems that survive refacing. Moving a sink or adding a drawer base means opening the run, and at that point replacing the whole run is the cleaner job.

Door styles and finishes

New doors can change a plain slab door into a shaker or raised panel. A shaker door is five pieces of hardwood or a maple frame with an mdf center, and it reads clean in either a painted or a stained finish. Thermofoil doors are a vacuum-pressed film over mdf, which handles a busy kitchen but peels at the edge near heat, so it stays away from the range.

Replacing the whole run also changes the footprint, since new boxes come in standard widths and heights that the old ones may not match. Refacing keeps every dimension, including the old out-of-level floors and bowed walls.