Refacing Cabinets Without Disturbing the Built-Ins

Refacing is sold, fairly, as the light-touch option: the carcasses stay, the layout stays, the plumbing and the wiring stay, and the kitchen gets new faces and new doors in a fraction of the time a rebuild takes. What gets left out of that description is that every opening in the run gets slightly smaller, and the appliances sitting in those openings were fitted to the old dimensions.

What refacing adds, and where it adds it

The work is additive. A veneer or laminate skin goes over the existing face frames, new stiles and rails are applied where the frames show, new doors and drawer fronts are hung, and the end panels are re-skinned. Nothing is taken away, which is the whole appeal.

Each of those additions has a thickness. Individually they are small. Around an appliance opening they arrive from both sides at once, and sometimes from above as well where a new rail is applied under a worktop or over a wall oven. The opening that was set out for a machine of a known width is now narrower by the sum of whatever was applied to it.

Measure the clear opening at every appliance before the first sheet goes on, and write the numbers down. It takes ten minutes and it is the only record anyone will have of what the run used to be.

Every appliance opening gets smaller

Three consequences follow and they show up in a predictable order.

The reveal tightens first, and it tightens unevenly, because material does not go on perfectly symmetrically down a long run. A gap that was even around a panelled front becomes a gap that is visibly wider on one side. That is cosmetic, and in a kitchen that has just been refaced for cosmetic reasons it is not a small thing.

Then doors begin to touch. A refrigerator door with a panel and a pull swings through an arc, and the new stile beside it now sits further into that arc than the old one did. The door catches on opening, or worse, it catches when it is being closed at speed with somebody’s hands full.

Last, and least visible, the unit will no longer come forward. A dishwasher or an undercounter cabinet that used to slide out of its opening with a few millimetres to spare has lost that margin to the new faces. The first person to find out is whoever is called when something inside it needs attention.

Trim that has to come off again

Refacing is finish work, and finish work likes to be permanent. Pieces get glued, pinned through the face and filled, scribed into worktops, or run past an appliance and sealed at the edge.

Every one of those choices is a decision about a future repair that the person making it does not know they are making. The pieces that matter are the ones bounding an appliance: the stiles either side of it, the rail above it, the plinth or toe kick below, and any filler between the machine and a wall.

Ask for those to be demountable. Pinned rather than glued, fixed from behind where possible, and finished so that lifting one does not tear a neighbour. Say it before the work starts, because it costs nothing at that point and cannot be retrofitted afterwards.

A sequence that works

Draw the appliances forward before the refacing begins. It protects grilles, gaskets and control panels from a week of dust and sanding, and it lets the new material be taken cleanly to the edge of each opening rather than feathered around a machine that is in the way.

Apply the new faces, then dry-fit each appliance back into its opening before any finish is sealed and before the doors are hung. That is the moment when a stile that is a hair too proud can be eased back with nothing lost. Fifteen minutes of dry fitting here removes almost every problem described above.

Set the reveals last, with the appliances in place and their doors on, so that what the eye reads is the gap around the real machine rather than the gap around its position on a drawing. Then take one photograph of each opening with a tape in it. In eight years, when something has to come out, that photograph is worth more than anyone’s memory of what the refacer did.

Spec check

Confirm each of these before anything is cut, ordered or delivered.

1. 1 The thickness the refacing adds to every face frame and stile in the run
2. 2 The clear opening at each appliance measured before the new material goes on
3. 3 Which appliance fronts stay and which are being remade in the new finish
4. 4 Which trim has to be removable, and that the refacer knows it before fixing anything
5. 5 The order of work: appliances out or forward first, new faces second, reveals set last

Questions on site? Viking Appliance Repair Denver, (720) 770-4189.

Follow-ups we get asked

Refacing does not touch the appliances. Why would it affect them?

Because it adds material to everything around them. New skins go over the face frames, new stiles go beside each opening, and the clear opening at each appliance gets smaller by whatever those add up to. The appliance has not moved; the hole it lives in has.

Should the appliances come out before the work starts?

Forward is usually enough, and it makes everything after it easier. It lets the refacer take the new material right to the edge of the opening, and it means nobody is cutting or sanding across a machine's grilles and gaskets for a week.

What if a door will not clear after the new faces go on?

The new stile beside it is trimmed back, which is far easier while the finish is still being worked than after it is sealed. Catch it with a dry fit. If a door is already binding on refaced cabinetry, Viking Appliance Repair Denver is on (720) 770-4189.

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