What the work is
Cabinets are the hardest painting in a house, because they are the only surfaces people touch with wet hands, lean on, and hit with cupboard doors every day. Everything that makes a cabinet finish last happens before color goes on.
Doors and drawer fronts come off and get labeled so every one goes back to the opening it came from. Hinges and hardware come off rather than getting masked: a sprayed edge around a hinge tells everyone the job was rushed. Then degreasing, because the area beside a range carries cooking oil in the finish, and then deglossing so the primer has something mechanical to hold.
We spray rather than brush. A brushed cabinet holds brush marks in exactly the places light rakes across them, and spraying is the only way to get a film that looks like it came from a factory. Boxes are sprayed in place behind masking; doors are sprayed off the house and returned when they have hardened enough to handle.
The finish needs time before it is in daily use. Paint is dry to the touch long before it has reached its final hardness, and cabinets are the one place where that gap matters, because a door closed onto a soft film will print and stick. We tell you how long to be careful for, and it is longer than you would guess.
What is included
- Doors and drawer fronts removed, numbered, and returned to their own openings
- Hardware and hinges removed, bagged and reinstalled
- Degreasing, then deglossing or scuff-sanding, then primer
- Boxes sprayed in place, doors sprayed off site or in a controlled space
- Hinges adjusted at reinstall so the doors line up
What is not
- Repairing delaminated thermofoil or a swollen particleboard edge. Paint does not fix either one and we will say so before you spend money
- Refacing or new doors, which is cabinetry work and not this
- Interior of the boxes, unless you ask for it. Most people do not want it and it adds days
What is different here
A great many kitchens in Washington County subdivisions were built with a factory-finished oak or maple in a mid-tone stain, and those finishes are exactly the ones that need real deglossing rather than a quick sand. The factory topcoat is harder than anything applied on site.
The other local note is hard water, and here it is not a small factor: the City of St. George tells residents to set a softener to 18 grains per gallon, with a maximum of 22, which the USGS scale classes as very hard. Where a cabinet sits beside a sink, that mineral spotting builds into the finish and has to come off before priming. It is invisible until primer goes over it, and then it is permanent.
What to ask anyone quoting this, us included
- Are you taking the doors off, or spraying them on the hinges?
- What are you cleaning them with before you sand?
- Brushed or sprayed, and where are the doors being sprayed?
- How long before I can use the kitchen normally?
- What happens if a door chips in the first month?