Hi Melissa, welcome aboard. I recently got my 1991 kitchen updated, a facelift rather than a complete redo. I also had oak cabinets professionally painted. However, I replaced the doors and drawer fronts, which give the cabinets a completely different look. It cost around $1K which was a lot of bang for the buck. I went with concealed hinges. However, if you decide to keep visible hinges, I don't think it looks bad at all, as long as they match your hardware.

I also got rid of a fluorescent box. Makes a huge difference. :)

Before:

After:

I had someone in for an estimate when we moved in and he led me to believe that my cabinets could not get new doors because of the exposed hinges and gaps between the doors. Maybe I should get another opinion because your kitchen looks gorgeous!

Melissa-Kitchen- We are having our cabinets painted and new doors added also. Part of our hinges show also. I would get another opinion.

Yes, you can get new doors. As you can probably tell from my Before photo, I had exposed hinges and partial overlay doors (where you have gaps and see part of the box and/or stiles. My new doors are full overlay, perhaps not as perfect as new cabs, but the overall look is the same. Concealed hinges work fine. My GC cheaped out on the hinges, so I had to retrofit a Blum soft-close add-on which was totally easy and inexpensive.

Sounds like someone wanted you to get all new cabs. New doors and drawer fronts can be yours, too. :)

Thanks for the wonderful advice! I didn't even know that I could get my hinges changed to hidden hinges. I also need to figure out where I could get an estimate for new doors. I guess that is my project for today. :)

Melissa, for me new doors were surprisingly affordable. I worked with a KD at a local kitchen/bath design shop. Her fee was a cut of what I bought through her. Even so, paint-grade maple with MDF panels came out a lot less than new boxes. Of course, I still have lower cabs and blind corner cabs, but I knew that going into it. Getting end panels helps a whole lot too.

I wouldn't do white hinges. They might look like they were painted when the cabinets were painted. You can get hinges to match your hardware.

I recently painted my walnut stained 1984 oak cabinets. still in the process of getting everything together. New doors was a whole lot more than 1K! I am installing weathered nickel hardware and replaced the exposed hinges with weathered nickel ones to match. I'm using a combo of items from Overstock and Amerock for Less.

I wouldn't do white, either. Too .. Harriet Homeowner? I don't know how to explain it, but I would go perhaps a nice satin finish nickle.

Don't let someone tell you you can't do something as simple as your doors. I buy reuse center cabinets and have had about a gudzillion different doors, styles, overlays, insets, you name it on them. I play around for very little money until I find what I like.

I'm even making some doors for a bank of cabinets that will have full, absolute overlay -- which I was told didn't exist. Ignorance doesn't make it true. I found the hidden hinges that do this overlay.

My point cabinets are just boxes. I've even cut them down so they weren't so deep, removed and added face frames, well.

I think you get my drift. Just because someone doesn't want to do it doesn't mean it can't be done.

Do a search. There are a bunch of great door people recommended on this board. I like Sherr's, CrownPoint, Barker, and the Cabinet Joint.com.

Are they filling the grain on your cabinets? Or are you letting it show thru the paint?

• I looked into getting overlayed doors and drawers for my 1977 cabinets. I was told that it can't be done because my corner doors open up back to back which currently have fillers. I hate the exposed hinges. I'm at a standstill in updating my kitchen because of this. Any suggestions?
  
  

We updated our 1982 cabinets to as close to full overlay as I could using compact blum hinges. This is what we did in the corners. It worked well! Even if you had a spacers between the 2, I think it would work since you can always make the doors bigger.

@Jean, there is a solution, but it is not cheap! I am trying to refresh a bath vanity that has partial overlay 3/8 lipped (rabbeted) doors and face frame cabinets. I assume these are your doors too. At Rockler (on-line or in the store) they have a Salice hinge made for this purpose. EACH hinge costs $15.00 and a soft close damper will add another $6. The piece to fasten on the face frame is proprietary to Rockler but the hinge is all Salice. Now, it you want to save some money you could block out the side of your face frame and purchase each hinge for $10. Regardless, you will have to bore for the holes using a 35 mm diameter and 11 mm depth on the back of the doors and they need to be at least 3/4 inch thick.

Now Salice was super nice and sent me two hinges to try. Unfortunately, we just don't have the equipment to bore out the holes. If you could take your doors to a cabinet shop, perhaps they can do it for you.

The hinge on my cabinet is a semi-concealed one called a knife hinge and going through all the trouble and expense was not worth it for me. But if you hate your hinges, it is an option.

I am the queen of research and this hinge took some digging and I was super happy to find it. Not just the cost!

Thank you so much for this information. This project certainly has been a dilemma with all of they yays and nays.

If you are painting, you can fill in the exposed hinge holes and then paint over it. I'd get new doors though, the old ones may not be the right size if you are changing to concealed hinges, however, if they are, you'll need to get them bored out for the new concealed hinges. They do sell white exposed hinges, I used them on an old laundry room cabinet that I painted white. They do blend in fine, but in the kitchen, I think they'd be more noticeable, if it were me, I'd prefer concealed hinges over the white.

Can anybody who has had cabinets painted + new doors and drawer faces tell me the price + approx square footage of kitchen?

I'm curious how the price of that would compare to "refacing" + new doors and drawer faces. My understanding is that refacing is putting some sort of a veneer on the existing cabinet boxes rather than simply painting them.

It seems that there are some franchise companies with a national presence that do refacing (Kitchen Tune-up, Kitchen Savers, to name a few), but apparently at least some of these companies refuse to do painting.

We did a DIY refacing on our cabinets a few years ago. We applied wood veneers to the cabinet boxes and added new doors. Doing veneer work is tricky, it can be done but there is a learning curve to it. To hire someone to do a refacing job is expensive, probably not much cheaper than getting new cabinets. We saved a lot of money because we did the work ourselves. Hiring a painter would be cheaper than a refacing.

I was blown away today when I got a price of $6500 for 22 doors and 18 wood drawers. I would prefer to reface but not for that price. My next option is to get concealed hinges which I'm told could cost approx. $20 each. The boarder around my doors and drawers are edged, not square so I hope that will work. I have had a few companies out to the home that also wanted to put veneer on the boxes. That reminds me of the sticky paper we used to put in for drawer liners. I want the boxes sanded and painted.

Refacing is expensive because it is labor intensive. Applying veneers is tricky, and the prep work, as with painting, is a good amount of work if it's done right.. There are different types/qualities of veneers. I don't know about the type that look like sticky paper, although I'm sure there are some like that. We used all wood veneers, wood facing and wood backing. Some of them come paper backed. Of you can get 1/8" plywood that can be cut to fit the boxes and frames. We got all our materials for the refacing from Conestoga, we were very pleased with the quality. To hire someone to do a refacing job is probably not cost effective, we saved quite a lot of $$$ by doing it ourselves, but it's not a job for everyone.

Can anybody who has had cabinets painted + new doors and drawer faces tell me the price + approx square footage of kitchen?

I had this done in 2012. I live in the SF Bay Area, so my costs are right up there. My kitchen is 10x10 and I didn't change the footprint at all. I got 25 new doors (including end panels), some large, some smaller, 7 drawer fronts, all paint grade maple. Decora shaker doors/end panels and slab drawer fronts. The cost, through my KD was just over $1K. I had everything painted professionally and that was a lot more, $4.3K. All the doors/drawer fronts were done in the painter's shop and the cabinet frames were done in place. The creamy white paint is the catalyzed stuff and has worn like iron.

I had a general contractor do the door and hinge installation and other work in the kitchen, so I can't say how much of his fee was just cabinet-related.

Initially I thought I'd have everything refaced. My cabs were golden oak. Home Depot sent out a guy to my house and he insisted I listen to a canned sales pitch. I wasn't born yesterday and didn't like his manner or approach. I asked, bottom line, how much. He threw out $10K, clearly uninterested in doing the work.

I ended up paying $20K for my entire kitchen, including new quartz counter, backsplash, lighting, etc. Everything but the wood floor, including labor. If I were doing this sort of facelift again, I would do it the same way.

I bought white hinges and paint matched them in the white which had a gray tint...I will follow up with a photo when done...having oak cabinets enameled with black bar pulls.

I think white hinges would be beautiful. Then you could have whatever color or type of hardware you wanted to change out in the future. If done right white hinges would be a refreshing change. You don't have to do whatever everyone else says to do. I have the problem of hinges that aren't made anymore and they show so trying the white makeover is an option for us too.

I painted my cabinets myself about 10 years ago. I couldn’t find white hinges to replace existing ones exactly and didn’t want to fill holes and redrill new ones so I painted the existing ones. I didn’t like seeing the exposed hinges so I wanted them to “disappear “ as much as possible. They do get rubbed in the center but it’s minor and hardly noticeable. Much better than dark or metal colored hinges on white cabinets. So my vote would be to use concealed hinges if possible, white ones if concealed aren

aren’t possible. Paint if you can’t do anything else or just don’t want to spend the money. I do touch up hinges every couple of years with a dry brush, which could stand to be freshened up again.

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Why yes it is. Thanks.