Each front is degreased, scuffed and primed according to its material, then sprayed with a durable topcoat and rehung. With kitchen cabinet painting the whole room gets a new colour, while stone, faucet and tile stay untouched.
Willowdale kitchens fall into a handful of groups, and the prep each group needs is what drives its price. A 1950s bungalow kitchen with an oak refit, a lacquered MDF kitchen in a 2008 custom home and a melamine galley in a Yonge Street condo are three different jobs. The biggest of those has its own page at infill home cabinet painting.
Kitchen cabinet painting works in every house type in this part of North York, but the first step changes with the house. A bungalow on Beecroft Road, a split-level east of Bayview Avenue and a custom home on Hollywood Avenue each start with a different primer.
Those steps are written into your quote, so the sequence is settled before anything is unscrewed.
Three counts open every cabinet painting quote we write: doors, drawer fronts and boxes. Every price on the page is tied to one of those counts, so you can check the math yourself.
Beneath them sit the material, its matched primer, the topcoat product, the sheen level, the coat count, plus whatever is excluded. Cabinet interiors get their own line, since shelves and box walls nearly double the sprayed area. Glass fronts, crown trim, plugged handle holes and supplied pulls are itemized separately. Should anything change mid-job, a new written item reaches you before the extra work starts.
No step in cabinet painting is optional, and skipping one is the usual reason a cheap job peels. It opens with removal: fronts come down with numbers on them, hinges get bagged, and photos record the layout before anything travels.
Degreasing is next, and it matters more than any other step for durability. Stir-frying, deep-frying and daily cooking leave an oily film on the doors above and beside the range, and water-based cleaners slide right over it. Heavy build-up gets a solvent degreaser, and the quote says so. Then we fill dents, sand everything to one even texture and apply the primer that suits the surface.
Two or three sprayed topcoats follow, with light sanding in between. Doors are coated off site, while boxes are coated at home behind sealed sheeting, a split covered in more depth under cabinet spray painting.
Plan on two or three days of us working inside, and on the whole cabinet painting job wrapping up roughly two weeks after pickup. Navy, charcoal and other saturated colours can need one more coat, adding a little time.
Running water, cooking and cold storage all remain available throughout. Plates simply sit on bare shelving for a while. Just one day, when the boxes get coated, is inconvenient.
A dry finish is not a cured finish. Water-based enamel can be used with care after roughly seven days and hardens for weeks more, whereas two-component polyurethane sets firm overnight. A humid Toronto August slows the cure, so the gentle period runs a little longer in summer.
Most Willowdale kitchens fall somewhere from $2,800 up to $6,000. Compact rooms begin around $1,700, while big or two-colour kitchens climb from $6,500 toward $10,000 and beyond. Figured by the opening, Toronto rates run roughly $145 to $275, which puts a 30-opening kitchen near $5,000 before extras.
Refacing with fresh fronts costs more than cabinet painting, usually somewhere from $3,300 to $11,000. Bonding primer for lacquer, thermofoil or melamine adds to either figure, and so does oak grain filling. Those are Toronto market ranges, and the figure on your own paperwork is what you actually pay.
Peeling in cabinet painting comes down to four culprits: trapped grease, missed scuffing, a primer mismatched to the material, or wall paint on joinery. Wall-grade paint never gets hard enough for something handled every day of the year.
Chips start where hands land, around the pulls and on the cutlery drawer. A thick coat chips sooner than a thin one, which is one more reason to spray rather than brush.
Expect about forty minutes in your kitchen, at no charge. Openings get tallied, the material gets named, the most damaged front gets inspected, and you keep a written cabinet painting scope with its total. Call +1 (647) 370-5454, describe the kitchen through our form, or head back to the Willowdale Cabinet Painting home page.
Condo vanities, pantry walls, laundry closets and custom built-ins are primed and topcoated with the kitchen system.
The custom homes that replaced Willowdale's bungalows hold some of the largest kitchens in Toronto, often with 50 or more doors in lacquer, polyester or painted MDF. Cabinet painting refreshes those kitchens for a fraction of what new custom millwork costs.
See Infill Homes
Before oak takes colour, it needs a tannin-sealing primer and a firm decision on what happens to its open pores. Handled in that sequence, oak cabinet painting ends up even, smooth and free of brown bleed.
See Oak Cabinets
Certain wood kitchens deserve restoring rather than covering, so refinishing removes the tired finish, shifts the stain tone where needed, and protects the timber with a sprayed clear coat. When the timber is handsome enough to keep on view, it replaces paint altogether.
See Refinishing
Spraying lays primer and topcoat down in thin, even coats that level out smooth, with no roller texture and no brush lines. Cabinet painting done this way looks close to a factory finish and lasts longer at the handles.
See Spray Painting
Shiny factory finishes will accept colour, provided an adhesion primer goes first and the surface remains firmly stuck to its core. Before any thermofoil, melamine or laminate cabinet painting, we inspect each door one by one.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
New doors and drawer fronts can go onto the boxes you already have, sprayed in the same colour as the frames. Think of it as the step between cabinet painting and a complete tear-out.
See Refacing and New Doors
Two-tone means pale wall runs matched with a deeper island or deeper base cabinets, and no cabinet painting layout is asked for more often today. An island can also be painted alone to give an older kitchen a new focus.
See Two-Tone and Islands
No cabinet painting booking is smaller than a bathroom vanity, which most often wraps up within two days. Steam and splashing mean it needs a hard topcoat and a full cure before heavy cleaning.
See Bathroom Vanities
Condo kitchens are small, but building rules, elevator bookings and shared air make the planning bigger than the job. With condo kitchen cabinet work, fronts leave the unit, so daily life inside carries on.
See Condo Kitchens
Pantries, laundry cupboards, mudroom lockers and fitted units receive the primer and topcoat a kitchen would. These units are anchored, so we do the job where they stand, inside sealed sheeting.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Fresh handles and quiet-closing hinges complete a painted kitchen, and fitting them is easiest when the fronts are down anyway. Unused holes get plugged, new ones are bored off a jig, and hardware goes on after the cabinet painting has hardened.
See Hardware and Hinges
A full door finished in the shade and propped in your kitchen settles what a tiny chip never will. Cabinet painting colour consultation lets you judge true colour on your actual cabinetry, under your actual lighting, before deciding.
See Colour ConsultationA visit covers the door tally, the material check and a written scope. There is no fee for the visit or the quote.
List what you know about the cabinets, house or suite. We phone back to pick a time and need only a name and number. Or reach us directly at +1 (647) 370-5454.
