Clovis Custom Cabinets builds cabinet repair to order in Clovis, California, and installs across the greater Fresno area.
Repair, refinish, reface, or replace
These four words get used interchangeably and they mean four different jobs at four very different prices. Getting the category right is most of the decision, so before anything else:
| Option | What changes | When it is the right call |
|---|---|---|
| Repair | Broken or worn components: hinges, slides, drawer boxes, shelves, hardware, damaged doors | The cabinets look acceptable but something has stopped working |
| Refinishing | The finish only. Same doors, same boxes, new colour or restored finish | Construction is sound and you like the door style, but the colour is dated or the finish is worn |
| Refacing | New doors and drawer fronts, new hardware, visible surfaces skinned. Boxes stay | Boxes are sound and square, but the door style itself is what looks dated |
| Replacement | Everything, including the layout | Boxes have structurally failed, or the layout itself is the problem |
Repair is the cheapest of the four and frequently the correct answer. It is also the one nobody will try to sell you, which is why it is worth asking about first. If a repair will hold, we will tell you that rather than quote you a kitchen.
Most of the repair work we do is on cabinetry somebody else built, and that is fine. Whether a repair is worth doing depends on how the boxes were made, not on who made them. You do not need to have bought your kitchen from us to have us fix it.
What we repair
- Doors that sag, rub, or will not close. Usually hinge adjustment or hinge replacement. Concealed hinges adjust in three directions, and a door that has drifted can often be brought back in minutes
- Stripped hinge and hardware screws. Common in particleboard, where a screw hole that has been opened up will not hold again. The hole gets plugged and re drilled rather than driven with a bigger screw
- Drawer slides that stick, drop, or have failed. Side mount, undermount, and centre mount slides are not interchangeable, so the replacement has to match the drawer box and the opening
- Drawer boxes coming apart. Stapled and butt jointed boxes loosen with use. A box can be re glued and re fastened, or replaced with a dovetailed one in the same opening
- Sagging and worn shelves. Deflection is a span problem. The fix is a thicker shelf, an added support, or shortening the span, depending on the cabinet
- Broken or missing handles and knobs. Including matching hole spacing, which is what makes a straight swap harder than it looks
- Damaged doors and drawer fronts. A single door can be built to match an existing run, though an exact finish match on aged cabinetry is not always achievable
- Damaged face frames and toe kicks. Repairable in most cases where the surrounding structure is sound
- Minor water damage at a sink base. Where a box bottom has swollen but the surrounding cabinet is still sound
Where repair stops being the right answer
Some conditions are past repair, and it is cheaper to hear that early:
- Particleboard boxes that have taken sustained water and swollen. Once a particleboard core swells, the swelling does not reverse when it dries. The panel is permanently a different shape
- Face frames that no longer hold a fastener anywhere along the run
- A layout that is the actual problem, where fixing the cabinets does not fix the kitchen
- Several cabinets failing at once, where the cost of repairs approaches refacing
What we do not take on: mould remediation and structural water damage. If a leak has gone into the wall or the subfloor, that needs the appropriate licensed trade before any cabinetry work is worth doing. We will tell you what we are seeing and what order to do it in.
How we assess it
Free on site look
We check every under sink box bottom, test whether face frames still hold a fastener, and check the run for square. It takes about twenty minutes and it decides the whole conversation.
A straight recommendation
Repair, refinish, reface, or replace, with the reasoning. If it is repair, you get the repair quoted. We are not going to quote a kitchen to a house that needs three hinges.
Written quote
Fixed price for the work described, after the assessment rather than before it.
