Shiny factory doors call for a bonding primer built to stick to slick faces, since an ordinary one just lets go. Sound melamine and laminate accept cabinet painting well, while thermofoil that has started lifting needs stripping or replacing first.
These doors are common in the Rathwood townhouse complexes built in the 1980s, in rental basement suites, and in the condo towers around Dixie Road and Bloor Street. Many kitchens updated in the 2000s also chose white thermofoil because it cost less than wood.
Melamine is a hard resin paper bonded to particleboard. The face takes cabinet painting well after sanding and bonding primer, but the edge banding tends to chip and expose raw board. We fill and seal those chips first.
Laminate is a thicker, tougher sheet glued to a core. It paints much like melamine and needs the same scuff and primer.
Thermofoil is a vinyl film heat-formed over shaped fibreboard, often with a routed shaker or cathedral profile. It paints well only while the film is fully bonded. Any lifting means the film will keep releasing under new paint.
Steam from the dishwasher and heat from the stove soften the glue behind the vinyl. The first sign is a corner curling back, then a bubble along an edge. Eventually a whole sheet can peel away.
We press every door edge during the visit and check the ones closest to heat most carefully. If a few are lifting, those doors can be peeled to bare fibreboard or replaced and then sprayed with the rest, so the kitchen still looks uniform. New doors and refacing explains the replacement route.
A bonding primer is the whole job on a slick door. Without it, even the best enamel can be scraped off with a fingernail within months. With it, cabinet painting on melamine lasts for years of normal use.
The primer adds a product and a coat, so it usually adds $150 to $400 across a kitchen. It dries for recoating within hours, but it keeps building grip for three to four days. We ask you to go easy on the doors during that first week.
Landlords often ask about this service. A dated melamine kitchen in a townhouse rental or basement unit is usually sound, and replacing it rarely pays back through rent. Cabinet painting gives a fresh colour for a fraction of the cost.
We book the job between one lease and the next. On day one the doors go off to be sprayed, the boxes are coated in the suite, and the next renter can typically take the keys roughly a week on.
Basement suites across Applewood Heights and Rathwood often have a small melamine or laminate kitchen installed for a tenant or family member. These kitchens get hard use and usually have low ceilings and limited airflow.
Cabinet painting in a basement suite follows the same bonding primer steps, with extra attention to ventilation. We keep the plastic sealed, run the extraction to an outside window and schedule the boxes for a single day. Many owners book basement cabinet painting together with the main kitchen upstairs, which lowers the cost of both.
We need to handle the doors in person, because photos do not show lifting edges or chipped banding. After the visit, you get a written cabinet painting quote with a clear list of which doors can be painted. Call +1 (289) 206-9979, send us the details or look over all of our services.
Bathroom vanities, pantry cupboards, laundry cabinets and basement bars in side-splits get the kitchen's primer and enamel.
We unhang every door and drawer front, strip off the grease, scuff and prime it to suit its material, spray on a tough enamel and put it back up. Kitchen cabinet painting recolours the whole room while counters, sink and flooring stay exactly as they are.
See Kitchen Cabinets
Original bungalow kitchens are small, closed rooms with solid wood or plywood cabinets that have often been painted several times already. Cabinet painting in these houses starts with the old layers, because what is under the top coat decides how the job is done.
See Bungalows
Oak lets brown tannin seep up through water-based primer, and its open grain telegraphs through colour unless it gets filled. So the first coat in oak cabinet painting is always a shellac-based primer that seals the tannin in.
See Oak Cabinets
With refinishing, the worn topcoat comes off by stripping or sanding, new stain balances the colour, and a sprayed clear layer protects the wood. It is our pick over paint when the timber is the most attractive feature of the kitchen.
See Refinishing
Spray equipment breaks the enamel into a fine mist that settles into one even film, with no brush lines or roller texture. That is the difference between cabinet painting that looks factory-made and a finish that looks homemade.
See Spray Painting
With refacing, fresh doors and drawer fronts go onto the boxes you already have, and the frames are sprayed to match them. We can also swap just one or two damaged doors and finish them with everything else during cabinet painting, so the fix blends in.
See Refacing and New Doors
Two-tone cabinet painting puts one colour on the uppers and a deeper one on the lowers or the island. Plenty of people paint only the island, which is usually the simplest way to give the room a fresh centrepiece.
See Two-Tone and Islands
Painting a bathroom vanity usually takes one or two days, and the room is back in use quickly. We treat vanity cabinet painting as a full job, with primer and enamel chosen for daily steam and splashing.
See Bathroom Vanities
A condo galley usually has ten to fifteen doors and turns around quickly. Condo cabinet work depends on planning the elevator booking, the parking and the odour control with the building before any work starts.
See Condo Kitchens
Pantry cupboards, laundry cabinets, closet doors, bookcases and rec room bars go through the same steps as a kitchen. Since nearly all of them are fastened to walls, they are coated where they stand inside a plastic enclosure.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
We plug old knob holes until they disappear under the new colour and bore new ones through a jig so pulls line up exactly. While doors are off for cabinet painting, worn hinges are replaced with soft-close hinges.
See Hardware and Hinges
Our most requested shades are white, cream, greige, sage, navy and charcoal, but a tiny paper swatch rarely predicts how any of them will look at home. Our cabinet painting colour process sprays one of your real doors and leaves it with you for a few days.
See Colour ConsultationWe come out, count every opening, name the material and put the job in writing, free of charge.
Any detail helps, from door style to the year the house went up. We will call to pick a time, and only a name and phone number are required. If you would rather talk, call +1 (289) 206-9979.
