Doors, drawer fronts and boxes stay exactly where they are. Grease and old sheen come off, each surface takes the primer it needs, and sprayed colour turns a dated kitchen into cabinet painting that wears like factory work.
Kitchens across this city run from birch and plywood slabs in the older Bramalea sections, through the golden oak of Heart Lake and Huttonville, to the thermofoil and laminate that fill Castlemore and nearly every basement second kitchen. Each material takes its own primer. The oak cabinet painting page and the thermofoil and melamine page deal with the two we meet most often.
Every Kitchen Cabinet Painting Job Runs In The Same Order
Tag, degrease, sand, prime, fill, spray, sand again, spray again, then cure. No step in that cabinet painting sequence gets dropped to shorten the calendar, because each one exists to stop a specific failure. The doors come off first and the drawer fronts after them, each numbered where the mark will not show, so every hinge returns to the hole it was cut for.
Degreasing comes next and it matters more here than in most places. Daily high-heat cooking in a full house lays down an oil and wax film that a household cleaner spreads around rather than removes, so the doors get a proper degreaser and, where the build-up is heavy, a solvent one. Kitchen cabinet painting laid over that film releases in sheets within a year.
The surface is then sanded dull to about 220 grit, with dents and redundant hardware holes filled and any gaps caulked. Cabinet painting primer follows the substrate: shellac where oak or cherry would otherwise bleed tannin, a waterborne bonding primer where melamine, thermofoil or laminate is involved, and a standard cabinet primer over maple, MDF and anything previously painted. Two or three sprayed topcoats, thin and sanded between, finish the cabinet painting.
A Kitchen Cabinet Painting Quote Names Every Piece In The Room
The written quote counts doors, drawer fronts, boxes, end panels and any glass or open shelving, and against each part it records the material, which primer goes on, which topcoat family follows, the sheen, how many coats, whatever grain fill is needed and the price. It also states plainly whether the island, the crown moulding, the pantry or a basement kitchen is inside the number or outside it.
A single total covering an entire kitchen compares with nothing, and that style of quote leaves room for items to appear later. The free visit behind a proper cabinet painting quote takes about half an hour.
Around Two Weeks In Total, With Three Days Inside The House
Most kitchen cabinet painting here occupies three days of labour indoors and roughly two weeks end to end. Removal, protection, degreasing and sanding take up the opening day. Behind sealed plastic, boxes and face frames are primed and sprayed across the next day or two. Doors then spend seven to ten days in the shop, where they are primed, filled, sprayed and left flat to harden.
Through cabinet painting the kitchen keeps working as open shelving, and sink, stove, fridge and dishwasher all stay in service. That matters in a house of six where eating out for a week is neither cheap nor practical. The cabinet spray painting page explains why the doors leave rather than being brushed in place.
Dry In Hours, Cured In Weeks, And The Difference Matters
Touch-dry comes within a few hours on a waterborne alkyd enamel, ordinary use once a week has passed, and full hardness near the thirty-day mark. A two-part 2K polyurethane covers most of that ground inside a day. Either product wants soft cloths and nothing abrasive through the early weeks. Chips around the pulls and along the cutlery drawer nearly always trace to heavy use while the cabinet painting was still curing, so our care notes spell the timeline out.
Kitchen Cabinet Painting Prices Follow The Ontario Market
Cabinet painting a whole kitchen anywhere in Ontario lands most often between $2,500 and $5,500. A small kitchen opens near $1,500. Large or two-colour work reaches $6,000 to $9,000 and beyond, and one door by itself sits near $130 to $250. Oak that needs grain fill, thermofoil that needs bonding primer, a deep colour change and a forty-door house each lift the figure. Ranges like those describe a market, not a price list, and the written quote produced after a free visit is what actually applies.
Built-In Wall Units, Mantels And Bookcases Take Longer Than They Look
A fireplace wall with bookcases either side holds a lot of cabinet painting in a small footprint, and most of it is inside corners, shelf edges and face frame. A mantel adds mouldings that need brushwork where a spray cannot reach cleanly. Painted bookcases show every drip, because the eye travels along a horizontal shelf edge the way it never does along a cabinet door.
Adjustable shelves come out to be sprayed flat, shelf pins are bagged and labelled, and the fixed carcass takes its cabinet painting in place. A wall unit on its own is normally one or two days, plus the cure.
Soft-Close Hinges Are The Easiest Upgrade In A Cabinet Painting Job
Cabinet painting has every door off already and every hinge bagged and labelled, so swapping hinges costs almost nothing in extra labour. Old self-closing hinges with a spring are what most 1990s and 2000s kitchens have, and they are what makes a cabinet door bang.
Modern concealed hinges with a built-in damper drop straight into the same 35 millimetre cup in most cases. In a busy house where cabinet doors get used a hundred times a day, that one change is the thing people notice most after the colour. Drawer boxes can take soft-close runners at the same time where the existing boxes allow it.
Book A Free Kitchen Cabinet Painting Visit
A visit runs about thirty minutes, and the written quote lands one or two days behind it. Use the form or call +1 (289) 201-6897 with an approximate door count and your part of the city, be that Bramalea, Springdale, Snelgrove or out toward Bolton. Every other service, from islands to vanities to a second kitchen downstairs, is set out on the home page.
A cabinet painting quote listing every door, every drawer front, the primer, the topcoat family and the coat count is the only fair basis on which to compare prices, and getting one here costs nothing.
Kitchen Cabinet Painting Questions
What happens to the hinges and the handles?
Everything comes off before the cabinet painting starts and goes into bags labelled by cabinet. Old handle holes take a hard filler, then a level sanding and primer. New holes are set out with a template once the cabinet painting film is hard. Worn hinges become soft-close ones at the same time, since every door is off anyway.
Do the insides of the cabinets get painted?
Not by default. Interiors are usually melamine in decent shape, and cabinet painting them adds significant labour to a surface that stays shut. Anyone who wants them gets them priced separately, and they are worth doing where there is glass-front or open shelving.
Can a painted kitchen be repainted later in a different colour?
Yes, and an already painted kitchen is the easiest of all for cabinet painting. A sound painted surface needs a scuff sand and a bonding primer rather than stripping, which takes less labour than the first job did. Doors that have chipped down to bare substrate get spot-primed before the new colour goes on.