If you are looking to paint kitchen cabinets, 2 Cabinet Girls has been specializing in painting kitchen cabinets since we started and this is the question we hear the most, “How much will it cost to paint my cabinets?” We have always been as honest and transparent as possible about our pricing and process, even though our competitors try to use it against us 🙂

Although no two painting projects are the same, and your needs may differ from our average, we can tell you what we’ve been seeing over the past year.

“I could do that myself.” you may be thinking. Honestly, you’re correct. Painting isn’t brain surgery and nobody is going to die if you mess it up.

Let’s look behind the curtain and see if it makes sense for you to tackle the job yourself.

If you have a 40 hour a week job (with the commute added in) then you’re probably away from your kitchen most days. That leaves you the weekend to DIY your kitchen cabinets. We’ve written a long blog post on exactly how to paint your cabinets just like we do, but I’ll summarize it here. For this exercise, I’ll assume that your free time is worth $30 per hour (feel free to adjust it as you see fit). What follows is a realistic, best-case-scenario for a DIY cabinet painter.

You don’t need to have a kitchen as outdated as the Brady Bunch to want to update the cabinets to something more stylish. Painting your old kitchen cabinets might be the perfect solution.

We got these questions on our Facebook Page when we asked people what their lingering concern about painting their cabinets was.
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When Cabinet Refacing Makes Sense

Cabinet refacing can save up to 50 percent compared to the cost of replacing,” says Cheryl Catalano, owner of Kitchen Solvers, a cabinet refacing franchise in Napierville, Illinois.

Deborah Ramos

Even with the potential cost-savings, however, refacing isn’t right for every kitchen remodel. Before making the decision to reface homeowners need to consider a number of factors, starting with the “bones” of their current kitchen cabinets. “If they are not high-quality cabinets to begin with, it usually makes more sense to replace the entire piece,” says Deborah Ramos, an interior designer in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

What is cabinet refacing?

Cabinet refacing companies will “wrap” your bases with a brand-new veneer or thin piece of wood that will make your cabinet boxes look brand new. They will also give you brand-new doors and drawers. These new pieces can be stained or painted without all the construction associated with tearing out your old cabinets and installing new ones.

When Cabinet Painting Makes Sense

When your kitchen cabinets or bathroom cabinets are in good shape but you would like to change the color, painting your cabinets makes the most sense.

Maybe your home was built when dark cabinets were all the rage and now your kitchen or bath seems too dark. Maybe your builder gave you boring white cabinets and you’d like a splash of color. Maybe your cabinets and floor are so closely matched that it all runs together. Any of those situations are where painting your kitchen cabinets makes sense and saves you even more money.

What exactly is cabinet painting?

It’s exactly what it sounds like, we come in and paint your cabinets. We paint the bases (the parts that are screwed into the walls and floors) and take the cabinet doors and cabinet drawers back to our shop to spray them in our paint booth. The process takes a week and you never really lose the use of your kitchen.

How much does cabinet painting cost?

If you have a modest kitchen, like the one pictured on the right, the cost would be about $3.000

You can find out how much it would cost for your kitchen by counting up all the doors and drawers and entering that into our kitchen cabinet cost estimator (which doesn’t require your email or phone number or any additional information) and you’ll get an instant ballpark estimate.

Get your Ballpark Quote

Who doesn’t love the beauty of oak?

The truth is, a lot of people don’t. As a professional cabinet painter, I’ve started to worry about oak cabinet jobs because some customers aren’t ready for the end result. They like the color, they like the quality of the work, but they almost always say, “I can still see the grain.”

Yes, oak has a very strong grain that requires extra attention to fully cover with paint, but the actual topography of the wood will not be changed by adding paint. Think about the last time you painted a wall and missed one of the old nail holes – the paint doesn’t fill in holes or repair things.
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Over the past eleven years, I’ve learned so much from my customers. The most important thing I’ve learned is what’s important to them better be important to me too. Here’s a short list of the questions anyone hiring someone to paint their cabinets should ask.
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I am so happy that almost everyday I get at least 1 or 2 people contacting me for a quote. About 10% of the time, I hear back from the person telling me that they received a quote from someone else for “a lot less.”

When I was first starting out, those calls concerned me. Was I over pricing my services? Were my costs too high? Was I paying my people too much? Should I be doing less prep work?

The flip side is that my customers are really happy with the results. Most tell us that it turned out better than they ever imagined.
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If you’re a normal DIY homeowner painting kitchen cabinets in a house you’re already living in, we recommend using a waterborne alkyd paint. These paints create a glass-like finish that barely shows brush or roller marks and will hold up to your day-to-day wear and look like new cabinets.

Like any good painting projects, this one will require proper prep work, including cleaning, degreasing, filling in big dents or gouges with wood filler and finally sanding. When you decide to paint kitchen cabinets it’s even more important because of the abuse they will need to put up with.