Kitchen Renovations
Kitchen Cabinet Refacing in Calgary
Refacing is the right answer about half the time. The other half, it's good money spent on cabinet boxes that should have come out.
We visit your home, then you get a written price and a start date.
Refacing — new doors and drawer fronts, a thin veneer over the visible frames and end panels, new hinges and hardware — costs a fraction of replacing the cabinets entirely. McAra Design + Build gives you a fixed price in writing for either route before any work begins.
The savings are real, but they only count if the existing cabinet boxes are worth keeping. When they aren't, refacing spends half the money and leaves you with the same kitchen underneath. We tell you which situation you're in at the walkthrough.
What's involved
New faces on boxes that earned it.
- 01Checking the condition of the cabinet boxes
- 02Replacing doors and drawer fronts
- 03Veneer over frames and end panels
- 04New hinges and drawer slides
- 05Hardware
- 06Cleaning inside cabinets and replacing shelves
- 07Toe kick and filler pieces
- 08Crown moulding and light valance
- 09Adjusting and lining everything up
What we check that others don't
What we check that others don't.
- §1
Whether the cabinet boxes are worth putting new doors on. We check the box material, the joints, and the base under the sink, where particleboard swells first if it's gotten wet. A solid plywood box with square openings is a good candidate. A box that's already swollen at the sink or that racks when you pull open a drawer is not, and new doors won't fix that.
- §2
What refacing can't fix. It can't change the layout, move a cabinet, change how deep or tall a cabinet is, or turn fixed shelves into drawers. If what bothers you about the kitchen is where things are rather than what they look like, refacing won't solve it, and we'd rather tell you that before you order new doors.
- §3
How square and level the run of cabinets actually is. New doors sit tight and even, which makes a crooked run of cabinets more obvious than the old doors ever did. We measure the openings and the cabinet faces first, and if the run needs shimming or a filler piece reworked, that's included in the scope.
- §4
The hinges and slides, not just the doors. Most of what bothers people day to day is the movement — doors that won't close, drawers that stick. Refacing is the moment to swap in hardware that closes itself and adjusts, and it costs very little alongside the new doors.
- §5
What's behind the sink cabinet before we commit to anything. Twenty years of a slow leak often lives in that one cabinet. We look at it before quoting, because a wet, swollen sink cabinet changes the answer from refacing to replacing that section.
How long it takes
Three to seven days on site.
Measuring and building the new doors takes three to five weeks before we start on site. The kitchen stays fully usable during that time.
Installation takes three to seven days depending on the size of the kitchen and how much of the run needs squaring up. The kitchen is out of service for a day or two at most.
We put it in writing.
- A fixed price
- agreed before we start, and it doesn't move unless you change the scope.
- A completion date
- in the contract, not a range, not a best guess.
- A workmanship warranty
- if it fails because of how we installed it, we fix it. No argument, no invoice.
Most renovation guarantees are a paragraph of conditions. Ours is three commitments you can hold us to.
Questions people ask before they book.
- Reface when the boxes are structurally solid, the layout already works, and the doors are what you actually dislike. Replace when the layout is changing, the sink cabinet has swelled from water, or the plumbing is moving anyway. McAra Design + Build gives an honest answer at the walkthrough, including the times refacing is simply the cheaper right choice.
- No. Refacing changes what you see, not where anything sits in the room. Adding a drawer bank, making a cabinet deeper, or moving a row of upper cabinets all need new boxes, which is a different job. McAra Design + Build will say so directly if refacing would spend your money without fixing the layout problem you actually have.
- A day or two of real disruption. McAra Design + Build builds the new doors and veneer off site over three to five weeks while you keep using your existing kitchen normally, then installation itself takes three to seven days with only short interruptions to water and counter access along the way.
Where this sits
This work is part of Kitchen Renovations.
People looking at this page usually look at Kitchen Cabinet Painting and Load-Bearing Wall Removal in the same conversation.
Get a free in-home quote.
We visit your home, then you get a written price and a start date.
What are you planning?
Or call Chris directly: +1 (587) 837-3113