Cabinet Painting & Refinishing in Raleigh, NC

Degreasing is the step that decides everything

If you remember one thing about cabinet painting, make it this: cabinet finishes fail because of grease, not because of paint.

A kitchen deposits an invisible film of aerosolised cooking oil on every surface within reach of the hob, and years of it accumulate most heavily on the doors either side of the range and the cabinet fronts directly above it. It cannot be seen and it can barely be felt. Sand over it and you drive it into the substrate. Prime over it and the primer bonds to the grease film rather than the wood, which is exactly as strong as the grease film — which is to say, not at all.

So everything gets degreased with a proper cleaner before a single abrasive touches it. It is the least visible step in the entire process and it is the one that determines whether your doors still look right in five years. When you get a cabinet quote that is dramatically cheaper than the others, this is very often what is missing from it.

Sanding, bonding primer and why we spray

After degreasing, every surface gets scuff-sanded. The purpose is not to remove the old finish — on a factory-lacquered door that would take days — but to break the sheen so the primer has mechanical grip in addition to chemical adhesion.

Then a bonding primer, which is a genuinely different product from a general-purpose one. It is formulated to grab slick, previously finished surfaces that ordinary primer slides off. On factory-finished cabinetry it is not optional.

The finish is sprayed, not brushed, and this is the part you can see. A brushed cabinet door has stroke marks in it; they catch side light and they announce themselves for the life of the finish. A sprayed door has an even, factory-smooth film with no texture. Getting there means doors and drawer fronts come off, get labelled so every one returns to the opening it came from, and are sprayed flat in controlled conditions where dust and overspray are managed. The boxes and face frames are done in place with the kitchen fully masked.

Cure time is not dry time

This is the expectation most worth setting before the job starts, because it is where disappointment usually comes from.

A cabinet coating is dry to the touch within hours and fully cured in considerably longer — depending on the product and on how humid the week is, meaningful hardness can take a couple of weeks to develop. During that window the film is soft. Stacking heavy crockery on a shelf, slamming a door against its stop, or taping something to a fresh face can mark a finish that will be genuinely tough once it has hardened.

So we hang doors when they are ready to be handled and tell you plainly what to be gentle with, and for how long. Anyone promising a fully hardened kitchen the day they leave is describing something the chemistry does not do.

The practical version: your kitchen stays usable throughout — the sink, the appliances and the worktops are never out of action for the duration. It is the doors and drawer fronts that are away, and we sequence that so you are not living out of boxes.

Hardware, hinges and the details that date a kitchen

Hardware comes off rather than getting taped around. Painting up to a taped edge leaves a ridge, and paint that creeps under tape onto a hinge leaf stops it closing properly.

It is also the cheapest upgrade available in the whole project. If your doors are coming off anyway, swapping dated brass knobs for something current adds very little to the job and changes the read of the kitchen almost as much as the colour does. Existing holes usually dictate what fits, so bring that up at the estimate and we will tell you what your hole spacing allows.

Hinges are worth a look while everything is apart. Old surface-mount hinges are one of the strongest era signals in a kitchen. Whether they can be swapped for concealed hinges depends on how the doors are bored, which we can tell you once one is off.