5 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Attempt DIY Refacing

Thinking about refacing your cabinets yourself?

Unless you have experience refacing cabinets, we wouldn’t recommend doing the job yourself for 5 reasons:

The biggest reason Phoenix homeowners consider DIY cabinet refacing is to save money.

We know the cost of a cabinet refacing and completely understand the need for a budget, but the problem with a DIY refacing is that it can quickly exceed your set budget—especially if the cabinets have underlying damage. Going with a professional helps keep your budget in check, since they can give you a complete and accurate estimate before any work begins.

Another reason to go with a professional is to save you time. The average cabinet refacing takes a professional less than a week.

A DIY refacing, on the other hand, could easily take you multiple weeks or even months since you likely can’t commit to working on the cabinets 6–8 hours a day like a professional can.

Learn more about how long a cabinet refacing takes in our blog.

Imagine going through the work to buy all of the supplies to reface your cabinets, remove everything from your kitchen or bathroom, and strip the existing finish from your cabinets—only to discover your cabinets are in too bad of shape to be refaced and need to be replaced.

A professional can tell you whether your cabinets can handle a refacing from the initial inspection. If your cabinets aren’t in good enough shape to support a refacing, you’ll need to replace them completely.

Find out whether it’s time to replace your kitchen cabinets in our blog “When Should You Replace Your Kitchen Cabinets?”

If you DIY reface your cabinets, you’ll have to foot the bill for any damage to the finish after the job is done.

Going with a professional usually ensures that the finish is covered for a certain amount of time after the refacing, since most reliable companies will back their work with some kind of warranty.

At Cabinet Coatings, we guarantee that our water-borne coating won’t chip, crack or fade for 5 years after we reface your cabinets. If they do, we’ll come back to fix them.

With a DIY refacing, you’re limited to finish options that your local hardware or home improvement stores offer. You’ll likely see a lot of veneer options, which we’d never recommend for cabinets.

A professional can offer you many more finish options—not to mention finishes that are higher quality and longer-lasting than what you’d find locally.