Cabinet refinishing in National City

Most National City kitchens come in between $3,000 and $9,000, based on a rate of $75 to $150 per door or drawer. A bathroom vanity is usually $600 to $1,500. The count of doors sets the base number; condition moves it within the range. A kitchen whose earlier paint is peeling needs more preparation than one with sound varnish, and older homes add lead-safe containment. These are the same ranges as our cabinet painting across San Diego, and your quote is fixed in writing.

• Each door or drawer front: $75 to $150
• Typical full kitchen: $3,000 to $9,000
• Bathroom vanity: $600 to $1,500
• Failing old paint or lead-safe prep: priced into the quote up front

No, and the difference decides who you should call. Refinishing keeps your existing doors, drawer fronts and cabinet boxes and gives them a new sprayed finish, which is the work we do. Refacing swaps the doors for new ones and glues a veneer over the boxes, which is a carpentry and installation job rather than painting. If your doors are sound and you mainly want a new colour, refinishing gets you there for less. If you want a different door style, that is refacing.

• Refinishing: same doors and boxes, new sprayed colour (our work)
• Refacing: new doors and veneered boxes (a carpentry trade)
• Choose refinishing when the door shape still suits you

Usually, yes. Cabinets from that era were commonly built from solid wood or plywood, which takes a sprayed finish well and often outlasts the newer particleboard sold to replace it. The things that make refinishing a poor buy are damage, not age: a sink base swollen by a slow leak, doors that have warped and no longer close flat, or hinges torn out of the frame. We look at each of those at the estimate and tell you plainly if a cabinet is not worth spraying.

Yes, but not by painting over the peeling. Flaking usually means an earlier coat went on without degreasing or a bonding primer, so the new finish would only fail with it. We take loose paint back until what remains is firmly bonded, sand, prime and then spray. In a pre-1978 home that sanding is done with containment and cleaned up lead-safe. Homeowners in nearby Bonita run into the same problem, explained in why fresh paint peels off cabinets.

Yes, and it is one of the most cost-effective upgrades a rental kitchen can get. An empty unit lets us take every door at once and spray the boxes without working around anyone's dishes. Owners who manage several units often pick one durable colour and sheen for all of them, so a chipped door later is a quick touch-up instead of a mismatch. The lead rules still apply in a vacant unit built before 1978, and we follow them. For the rest of the unit, see all our painting in National City.

A cabinet-grade coating sprayed over a bonding primer, and with sensible care it lasts for years. On our La Mesa kitchen, the topcoat was Milesi HRK 114 2K, in a soft white with a dark contrast colour. Wear shows first where hands land: around the pulls and along the bottom of the sink-base doors. Vanities, linen cupboards and laundry cabinets get the same process, with a vanity typically $600 to $1,500, and walls and ceilings in those rooms fall under our interior painting service.