Replace Or Reuse Your Kitchen Doors?

Summary:  When it comes to kitchen doors you have a lot of options.  There are replacement kitchen doors or you also have the option of resurfacing your old doors if possible.  Resurfacing is cheaper but may not work with certain cabinets and can end up not looking as good as replacement doors.

Q:  We are planning a full kitchen remodel and are looking at upgrading our cabinets.  But, my husband and I got to thinking that maybe we should keep the old cabinets and just refinish the doors to save money.  Any thoughts?

A:  Well, like a lot of things, there are a couple of ways to look at this.

What Do You Want to Change About Your Kitchen?

When you start a remodel, particularly in the kitchen, most people start out with a goal in mind.  For example, in our recent kitchen renovation my wife's main goal was that she wanted a nice, large kitchen island.  The only problem was, to make that island happen we had to completely change the layout of the old kitchen and utilize some awkward dead space from an area near the old kitchen.

In short, we were going to have to completely change the footprint of the kitchen to accommodate what we wanted to do.

So that meant dismantling the old cabinets and possibly causing damage when I got them off the walls and moved around and so forth.

We gave serious thought to just replacing the kitchen cabinet doors and trying to use the cabinet shells but finish and texture of the old wood shells wasn't what my wife wanted.  Or me for that matter.

What I've found is that using replacement kitchen doors or resurfacing your old kitchen cupboard doors isn't just about economics.  Sure, you want to save money just like anybody else but even saving money comes at a cost.  Are you really going to be happy with what you've done?  You don't want to have to dig into the kitchen 3, 4 or 5 years down the road to redo the job the way you 'really' want it.  So give some thought to that.

Now, you can certainly gut your whole kitchen and reuse the cabinet shells and save money but are those cabinet shells going to fit into the new plan?

My advice is, if you are going to be doing any footprint changes you might want to give some thought to just getting new cabinets and, where possible, reusing some of the old shells.

We opted to do all new cabinets but, like I said above, we had a LOT of modifications to make.  We added a second oven, moved the sink and the dishwasher.  Also, our old upper cabinets didn't go all the way to the ceiling - so we had to replace all those anyways.

One regret I did have was that the old cabinets were much better build than the new cabinets.

Our old kitchen cabinets were built on site in the late 70's out of 5/8" plywood and were stout!  So I reused them in basement where we are putting in a canning kitchen for my wife.

SIDENOTE:  Another consideration when reusing old shells goes beyond just the footprint of the kitchen but also the usability of the old cabinets for today's needs.  For example, my wife didn't have an old cabinet that would conveniently house her cookie sheets vertically.  Which is what she wanted.  So she would have had to stack them on top of one another with the old cabinets.

Also, there were no deep cabinet drawers to house her mixing bowls with the old cabinets.  They were all shallow 8" drawers.  So, in the end, out of the at least dozen kitchen cabinets I took out of our old kitchen I would only be able to completely reuse 3 or 4 shells.  Those are the ones that are now in our basement.

If You Do Replace Your Kitchen Cabinet Doors...

At this point you should have a better idea of what it is you want to do.  If you do decide that you just want to change the kitchen cabinet door you have two options:

1. Replace the kitchen cabinet door itself with a new one while keeping the old cabinet shell.  Or...
2. Resurfacing the old kitchen cabinet door

Your decision will likely come down to what you can afford and how handy you are.

Resurfacing your kitchen cabinets is a viable option if you are handy.  It's also an especially good option if you have good, solid wood cabinets and you simply want to change the finish of them.  This is when I've seen the best results from resurfacing.  But again, it's more work for you.

Of course, you can hire a 'resurfacing' company but the cost savings that you've anticipated will be lost.

Another things to consider when resurfacing is where you want the kitchen cabinet handles to go.

If your kitchen cabinet shells are solid and you like the looks of them it's easier than ever to find a replacement kitchen door that you not only like, but also matches your shells.  In addition, there is none of the work involved like their is in resurfacing.  And frankly, replacement doors look pretty sharp when they are in.

As an example, in my first kitchen renovation I had a small galley kitchen with serviceable kitchen cabinets.  But, the doors themselves were covered in a laminate.  You could have certainly tried to 're-laminate' the old doors but I don't think we would have got a great product out of that.  I would have been much farther along to just get replacement doors that matched what we wanted to do in the kitchen.