What Cabinet Refacing Costs in Vaughan
Most kitchens land between $8,000 and $18,000. What moves a quote inside that range is the number of fronts, not the size of the room they hang in.
Where most kitchens land
Between $8,000 and $18,000 for a refaced kitchen across Vaughan and the GTA.
That is a wide range and the width is honest rather than evasive. A galley with twelve fronts and a U-shape with a pantry and an island are both "a kitchen", and one has roughly three times the work in it. The range covers both ends of what we are actually asked to do.
What it does not cover is a number pulled out of the air on a doorstep. Every figure we give is calculated from a count, and the calculation is the same one every time.
Why the count is the price
The quote is built in two parts, and neither of them is floor area.
The first part is the shop work: a price per door and a price per drawer front, multiplied by how many of each will come off. That covers removal, transport, all the preparation, multiple coats of 2K and the curing time between them, and the shop overhead behind it. Each front is handled individually, so each front is priced individually.
The second part is the on-site work: a fixed day rate multiplied by the number of days your kitchen needs. That is where the boxes get degreased, sanded and sprayed in place behind containment, and where the new fronts get hung and adjusted.
Total is the count plus the days plus whatever you add on. Nothing else.
The reason to be wary of linear-foot pricing is that it cannot see the count. Ten feet of wall might carry three tall pantry doors or nine small ones. Those are different jobs, they cost different amounts to do, and a number derived from the wall length will be wrong for one of them.
What decides the days
Three things, in order of how much they matter.
How many boxes there are. This is the primary driver and the most predictable one. More cabinet boxes means proportionally more spraying, more masking and more hours. A large kitchen takes longer than a small one in roughly direct proportion.
What condition they are in. Frames that have been waxed or polished for years need our solvent degreaser before anything will bond, which adds time. A finish that is already lifting has to come back further than one that is merely dated. Clean, sound cabinets can pull the estimate down.
How awkward the layout is. Tight access, an island that has to be worked around, a run that turns two corners, a ceiling height that puts the tops out of easy reach. A simple galley is quicker than a complex L-shape, at the same box count.
Most kitchens need somewhere between three and seven days on site. That estimate is made when the quote is written and it does not get revised upward later.
The lines you can decline
The base price covers the transformation: fronts, finish, boxes, hinges, installation. Everything else is quoted separately and shown as its own line, so the total is something you assemble rather than something you are handed.
New hardware — handles and knobs — is the most commonly taken add-on and the cheapest. Soft-close hinges are the second, and the one people mention most afterwards. Crown moulding changes the look of a run more than its cost suggests.
New drawer boxes are the add-on most often discovered rather than requested: the fronts come off and half the boxes behind them turn out to be stapled particleboard with the bottoms slipped out of their grooves. Cabinet modifications — altering an opening, converting a door cabinet to drawers — sit in the same category.
Panel-ready appliance fronts and countertop coordination are the two largest optional lines, and both are worth pricing even if you decline them, because knowing the number changes how people plan the next few years.
Against tearing the kitchen out
Replacement typically starts around $25,000 and commonly runs $30,000 to $40,000 for the kind of kitchen that would have cost $8,000 to $18,000 to reface.
The gap is not the whole story though, and the part people underestimate is time. A refacing project runs four to five weeks, and for four of those your kitchen works exactly as it does now — every appliance, the sink, the worktops, with open shelving where the fronts used to be. The week you actually feel is the installation week.
A replacement is several weeks with no kitchen at all, plus the trades that come with it: the old units out, the walls made good, plumbing and electrical moved to suit the new layout, flooring finished where the old run stood.
What you give up is the layout. If the layout is the problem, refacing is the wrong spend at any price and we will say so before quoting it. If the layout is fine and the fronts have dated, it is the cheaper answer by a wide margin and the faster one by a wider margin still.
What the money actually buys
A number means nothing without the work behind it. Refacing replaces every door and drawer front, renews the hinges, and sprays the boxes you already own in catalysed 2K rather than wrapping them in adhesive veneer. Knowing which parts of a kitchen are replaced and which are kept is worth ten minutes before comparing any two quotes, because the same word covers genuinely different jobs and the cheaper one is often buying the veneer.
The cheaper answer, where it applies
Refacing is not the cheapest way to change how a kitchen looks, and it is not always the right one. Where the door profile is sound and only the colour has dated, painting costs meaningfully less and produces the same relief. Working through when a colour change does the job a new door would takes a few minutes and occasionally removes the need for this page entirely, which is a better outcome than a cheaper quote.
Questions
Common questions about the price
- Why quote per door instead of per foot?
- Because the work is per door. Each front is removed, labelled, degreased, prepped, sprayed, cured, transported and hung. Ten linear feet can hold three doors or nine, and those are not the same job — a linear-foot number cannot tell them apart, which is why two quotes built that way can differ wildly on one kitchen.
- Does the price change once somebody sees the kitchen?
- No. Ninety-nine percent of our quotes are produced from photographs and the written price follows inside 24 to 48 hours. It is the final number. If a visit turns up something awkward, that is ours to absorb rather than a line added to your invoice.
- What is not in the base price?
- Hardware, crown moulding, new drawer boxes, cabinet modifications, panel-ready appliance fronts and countertop coordination. Each is a separate line rather than folded in, so you can see what it costs and decline it. Most people take two or three and leave the rest.
- How does that compare with replacing the kitchen?
- Replacement typically starts around $25,000 and commonly runs $30,000 to $40,000, against $8,000 to $18,000 for refacing — and the kitchen is out of use for five days rather than several weeks. What you keep is the layout, which is the right trade when the layout was never the complaint.
- When do I pay?
- Ten percent on signing, forty percent on the day the doors come off, and the remaining fifty percent after a walkthrough you have approved. Half the money arrives after the work does, which is deliberate and unusual in this trade.
Want the number for your kitchen rather than a range?
Send wide photographs of every run of cabinet and a written, itemised price comes back inside 24 hours — and it does not move afterwards. If refacing is the wrong answer for your boxes, that is the first thing you will hear.
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