Cabinet refinishing in Rancho Santa Fe

A Rancho Santa Fe kitchen usually costs $3,000 to $9,000 to refinish, based on $75 to $150 per door and drawer. Vanities run $600 to $1,500 each. In a large home the total is set by how many doors there are across the whole house, not by the kitchen alone, so we count every run and list it separately. You can do the kitchen now and the baths later at the same rates. The pricing matches our cabinet painting service across San Diego County, and this guide explains what else can add cost.

• Per door or drawer: $75 to $150
• Kitchen: $3,000 to $9,000 typical
• Bathroom vanity: $600 to $1,500 each
• Bar, laundry and office built-ins: priced per door and drawer

Refinish if you like your door style and the cabinets are sound; reface only if you want a different door shape. Refinishing is our work: we clean, sand, prime and spray a new finish onto the doors, drawers and frames you already have. Refacing means a cabinetmaker fits new doors and covers the boxes in veneer, which is carpentry, and we don't offer it. If your doors are solid wood and still sit flat and tight, a new sprayed colour is usually all they need.

• Keep the door style, change the colour: refinish (our work)
• Change the door shape itself: reface, through a cabinetmaker
• Not sure? We tell you at the free estimate which one suits your cabinets

Yes, and in Rancho Santa Fe that is often most of the job. Half the homes here have four or more bedrooms, and a house that size usually has a vanity in each bathroom, plus a wet bar, laundry cabinets or office shelving. Each gets the same process as the kitchen. Doing them in one project means one setup, one colour decision and a matching finish throughout, instead of a kitchen that looks newer than every other room. Some owners match everything; others keep the kitchen one colour and the baths another.

Usually yes. Cabinets from that era are often solid wood or plywood, and those take a sprayed finish well. The catch is age: the median Rancho Santa Fe home was built in 1977, and any home built before 1978 may have lead in its original finishes. Paid work that disturbs those finishes is covered by the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, so in an older house our EPA Lead-Safe Certified crews set up containment before any sanding and finish with a lead-safe cleanup. If a door has split or warped, it needs replacing before we spray.

Any month works, because the climate here is mild. August, the warmest month, averages a high of about 79°F in Rancho Santa Fe, so heat rarely affects how the finish goes on. Humidity matters more: the muggier stretch runs from early July to early October, and the enamel takes a little longer to harden then. The bigger factor is your calendar. Booking before the holidays or before guests arrive gives the finish its first couple of weeks to cure before the kitchen gets heavy use.

Plan on three to five working days for a kitchen, with each extra vanity or built-in adding time, and you get a written schedule before we start. In a large house the work can run room by room, so only one area is masked at a time and the rest of the home stays in normal use. If you are also planning walls, ceilings or an exterior repaint, see everything we paint in Rancho Santa Fe, so the work is sequenced and no two paint jobs overlap in the same rooms.