Refacing is the middle option between refinishing and replacing, and for a lot of Clovis kitchens it is the right one. Here is what it costs and what that number actually covers.
The 2026 numbers
| Kitchen size | Linear feet | Typical refacing cost |
|---|---|---|
| Small galley or cottage kitchen | 12 to 16 lf | $1,200 to $4,000 |
| Medium, the standard 10x10 | 20 to 25 lf | $2,000 to $6,250 |
| Large with island | 30 to 40 lf | $3,000 to $10,000 |
Independent cost guides put refacing at $100 to $250 per linear foot, with most homeowners spending $4,000 to $9,500 on a typical project. That is roughly 30 to 50 percent less than replacing comparable custom or semi-custom cabinetry.
What is actually included
A proper reface replaces every surface you can see:
- New doors and drawer fronts, built to your existing openings, in your chosen style and finish
- Matching wood veneer or rigid laminate over the exposed face frames
- Exposed end panels skinned to match, including islands and peninsulas
- All new soft close concealed hinges
- All new full extension undermount drawer glides
- New knobs or pulls
- Toe kick, light rail, and crown moulding where the design calls for it
When it is finished, the only original parts remaining are the carcasses nobody sees.
The line item that separates good quotes from cheap ones: exposed end panels. Skinning the visible ends of islands, peninsulas, and any run that terminates in the open is what makes a reface look like new cabinetry rather than new doors on old boxes. A quote that omits them is cheaper for a reason.
The six things that move your number
- Linear footage and door count. Refacing is driven by both, since every door and drawer front is built individually
- Door style and material. A painted five piece door costs more than a flat slab or a laminate front
- Veneer versus rigid laminate on the frames. Real wood veneer costs more and matches a stained door far better
- Number of exposed end panels, especially on islands
- Interior upgrades added at the same time, such as roll out shelves or a waste pullout. These are genuinely worth doing while everything is apart
- Glass inserts or open shelving in place of solid doors
The cost you cannot see, and should insist on
A failed reface fails at the glue line, not at the door. Kitchen face frames carry years of cooking film and hand oils, concentrated worst around the pulls and above the range. In some older Clovis and Selma housing they also carry two or three layers of old paint, sometimes applied over grease without degreasing.
Veneer bonds to whatever layer is on top. If that layer is not properly bonded to the substrate underneath, the reface inherits the failure. Proper preparation means degreasing every frame and stripping back to a sound substrate where the paint history is questionable. It takes longer, it does not show in photographs, and it is the difference between a reface that lasts and one that lifts at the edges in two years.
If your home predates 1978
Housing built before 1978 may contain lead based paint, and the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule governs how work disturbing painted surfaces in those homes must be handled. Refacing involves sanding and sometimes stripping frames, which falls inside that definition.
A meaningful share of central Clovis, Sanger, Selma, and Reedley housing predates that cutoff. This is not a reason to avoid refacing an older home. It is a reason to establish the age of the house before anyone arrives with a sander, and to ask how the shop scopes that work.
What disqualifies a kitchen
Refacing only works if the boxes are worth keeping. It is not viable if:
- Box bottoms are swollen or delaminating, most commonly under the sink
- Face frames no longer hold a fastener, or are pulling away from the carcass
- Cabinets have racked out of square
- You want the layout changed, or a soffit removed and uppers taken to the ceiling
- The existing doors are peeling thermofoil, since nothing bonds reliably over lifting vinyl film. That said, refacing is the correct fix for thermofoil, because the doors are replaced
Our refacing versus replacing guide covers the twenty minute test that settles it.
Timeline and disruption
Most Clovis kitchens are finished in three to five days on site, after roughly two to four weeks of off site production during which your kitchen stays completely usable. That is the strongest practical argument for refacing over replacement: a full replacement takes the kitchen out of service for one to three weeks.
If refacing is still too much
Refinishing costs less than either refacing or replacing. Your existing doors are stripped, primed, and sprayed in a controlled shop, and the boxes are finished on site. The trade off is that refinishing is the only one of the three that cannot change your door style. If your complaint is the raised panel oak profile rather than the colour, painting it white gives you a white raised panel oak kitchen.
Our cabinet refacing page covers the process in detail, and cabinet refinishing covers the cheaper route.
Upgrades worth adding while everything is apart
Refacing opens up your cabinetry once. Several improvements are far cheaper done at that moment than as a separate job later:
- Roll out shelves inside existing base cabinets. This is the closest refacing gets to solving the reach problem that makes door bays inefficient
- A waste and recycling pullout, which gets the bin off the floor and frequently recovers a genuine square foot of circulation
- Under cabinet lighting, since the frames are already exposed
- Glass inserts in one or two upper doors, which breaks up a long run visually
- New shelving where existing shelves have sagged. Particleboard shelving that has deflected does not recover
- Interior cleaning and re-lining, straightforward while the doors are off
Each is modest on its own. Together they address most of what people find frustrating about a kitchen whose appearance is the only thing being changed.
What refacing will not fix, and be clear about it
Refacing keeps your existing boxes, which means it keeps their positions and dimensions. That means:
- The blind corner stays a blind corner
- A soffit above the uppers stays, because removing it would leave a gap above boxes built to the old height
- Base cabinets cannot be converted from doors to drawers, since the opening belongs to the box
- Non standard cabinet depths stay non standard, and keep fighting modern appliances
- The layout stays exactly as it is
If your complaint is "this looks dated", refacing solves it completely for roughly a third of the cost of replacement. If your complaint is "this does not work", refacing preserves the problem in a prettier form. Being honest with yourself about which one you have is the most useful thing you can do before getting quotes. Our refacing versus replacing guide works through the decision in detail.
Clovis Custom Cabinets builds custom cabinetry to order in Clovis, California, for homes and businesses across the greater Fresno area. For a free measure and a written quote, call (559) 314-3498.
