The kitchen remodel
What are my alternatives to a complete gut job?
by Joseph Fusco
03/06/2008

The first thing is to choose the right remodel type for your circumstances. It's nice to have dreams, but sooner or later we all wake up to the realities of a complete and complex kitchen remodel.

Often when people look to remodel their kitchens the first thing they focus on is the cabinetry. Many not realizing what the average cost of cabinetry is.  For example; a mid-sized kitchen will be about $35,000 for a custom made one, $23,000 for a semi-custom and about $13,500 for a stock (higher-end) one by a well known national brand. Adding new countertops, new appliances, and new floors, electrical & lighting, plumbing and a good deal of both rough and finish carpentry the cost can really begin to skyrocket. Compound that with the average time frame of 6-12 weeks to complete the project if all goes according to plan and fear can really set in.

Now the above paragraph isn’t meant to discourage anyone who wants to do a complete gut kitchen remodel, It’s to help those who have never been involved with the process to get a real feel for what it takes. There are still possible issues like being displaced from which might arguably be the most used room in today’s society for quite a long time especially if this is the only kitchen in the home. There are the additional costs of having to eat out or order in more frequently then you may be accustom to. All of these things can turn what’s supposed to be good thing in your life into a possible nightmare! It’s not any wonder that after realizing the realities of a kitchen remodel, many start looking for alternatives. Sometimes people are led to believe that there really aren’t any viable alternatives to the complete gut. Well I’m here to tell you that there are.

Don't be misled by anyone telling you that. There are some very good alternatives to a complete gut job and they just depend on a few factors. The first of which would be, are the existing cabinets in good to excellent condition? Obviously, if the cabinets are in poor condition there is no reason to keep them, but if they are you can then look at the next factor. Does the existing kitchen layout work for you and any future need you might have? This question might actually be more important than whether the cabinets are in good shape. If your kitchen layout doesn't work for you there is no reason once again to keep the cabinets unless you would be willing to rearrange and reuse them within a new layout. Since relocating the cabinets in itself has issues, like what to do with the floors if you expose more floor space or how much reworking of the exiting cabinets will need to be done and what if you need to have fill in cabinets made to match? All of that would most likely put you right back into a complete gut job just to get the best bang for your buck. So if the cabinets are in good shape and the layout is fine then you can move to the options that would be available to you. If your cabinets and there layout don’t pass these simple tests then it’s time to replace them. If your cabinets do pass these tests then you have a couple of options.

The first option would be to re-face. Re-facing has many advantages over just about any other type of remodel with only a very few negatives.

Re-Facing:
Re-facing is a process were you replace all the existing doors and drawer fronts and apply a veneer over all the exposed visible areas of the cabinetry. This would include all rails and styles, all finished end panels and the toe kicks. You can also install new drawer boxes and upgrade your glides if you'd like as this is usually an "extra" with most company's doing the work. There are many door styles and wood species to choose from when doing a re-face. Woods like cherry, maple and oak are very common, but you could easily get ash, birch, pine, poplar, walnut or even mahogany and all of them are available in a variety of finishes. Re-facing can either be done by a professional or as a diy project. Although the process of applying the veneer might be intimidating to most diy'er at first, with practice, it's not hard to master. The price of a re-face would depend on just how many doors, drawer fronts, drawer boxes, glides, rails, styles and finished end panels you were replacing. The style, wood species and finish you pick will also be a factor as well, but the average cost is between $3,500 and $10,000 for a mid-sized kitchen.

The real advantage to this type of remodel is time, most can be done within a week’s time and many more will only take a few days at most if you have it done professional. If you diy it, it may take a bit longer. Another advantage is convenience. You could actually use your kitchen while this work was going on which is a big plus. Consider that a gut remodel can take up to 12 weeks and during that time you in all likelihood wouldn't have use of the kitchen. There is an excellent book on re-facing by Herrick Kimball Refacing Cabinets: Making an Old Kitchen New (Fine Homebuilding) that would be worth the investment to anyone wanting to do this project themselves. The only thing about this option is that the insides of the cabinets remain the same. Most people just leave them that way, while others find painting them to be just the ticket.

The second option would be a redress of the cabinets and that would consist of either refinishing them or painting them.

Redress:
Refinishing or painting might be the least expensive option, but requires a great deal of prep work. The costs of materials are low (in most cases), but labor (professional) is high. Of the two, painting would be the easiest to do and would be the most forgiving. Whether you want to refinish would depend on what type of wood your cabinets are made from and the degree of prep work needed to bring them to a state that they would look good when done. Don't underestimate the importance of this, I've seen kitchens that were complete disaster done by both "so called" pro's and diy-er's. Knowing what you can get from your existing cabinetry is more important than what you "think" you can get. Refinishing will always involve some type of striping agent which can either be a toxic or "green" product. The difference other then the obvious is cost, green costs more. Once the stripping is complete you will need to neutralize it with yet another agent. If you used a green stripper, most likely it would be water based and that will no doubt raise the grain of the wood which would add additional sanding. Once you thoroughly sand the surface of all the wood, you then vacuum and clean it with either NATHPA or mineral spirits to ready it for stain. The staining may need to be preformed after a stain conditioning step and that would depend on the wood type, its predisposition to blotching and its porosity.  You can test a small area to determine if you need to condition the wood. A good conditioner is shellac and the process for conditioning wood can be located here. Once you’ve applied the stain a topcoat or protective layer would also need to be applied (2 is good 3 would be better). A good quality polyurethane or lacquer is most often the product of choice. Nowadays they come in both the oil or alkaloid base or water based varieties. 

Painting:
Painting on the other hand is a bit more forgiving but none the less requires a good deal of prep work as well. It would usually begin with a thorough cleaning with a degreaser like TSP (tri sodium phosphate) or denatured alcohol. This would then be followed by a sanding with 100 grit sand paper. This would then reveal any defects that would need to be filled and repaired.  Once all the repairs are made another sanding with 100 grit would be required. The final sanding would be stepped through 120,150 and then 180. Once all the sanding was complete, you’d vacuum and clean the cabinets just like you would if they were going to be stained. Once clean, a good oil or alkaloid base primer would be applied to the cabinets, when dry this primer would be sanded with 220 grit. Once again you’d need to clean the cabinets to get them ready for whatever type finish you’d be applying either oil or alkaloid based paint.  The finish top coat could be as simple as a color or as complex as a faux. There are products that will de-gloss your cabinets  and these products claim you can just apply the product and then paint over it with little or no sanding but, if you have any repairs you would still need to do some sanding to the repaired areas. Also with either of these methods you’d need to do a fair amount of “protection” work to assure that what you were doing only went on what you wanted too.

If your cabinets are made of a HPL (high pressure laminate) like Nevamar®, Formica® or Wilsonart®, the same options would be available to you as stated above with a few minor caveats. There are special products that allow you to apply over HPL so it can be painted. In either case you’d have to insure that all the HLP was well bonded. If your HLP is delaminating then there really isn’t any good option but to replace them.  The processes of either re-facing or painting HPL are basically the same as wood.

Best of luck with your projects and if you have any questions feel free to ask them here.