Cabinet Painting throughout Arlington, MA.

The year your house was built tells you little about the age of its kitchen. Census estimates show only about 8% of the town's housing went up in 2000 or later, against a median construction year of 1945, so roughly nine in ten units are in buildings that predate 2000, and a kitchen inside one of them may have been redone one or more times since. The cabinets you have now could be site-built originals, oak boxes from a 1980s update or flat-panel MDF from a recent renovation.

That matters because each one takes paint differently, so the material has to be identified before any product is chosen: open the doors, look at the inside faces and edges, and check what the boxes are made of.

Reading the material

Open-grain woods such as oak show their grain through paint unless the pores are filled; that texture suits some kitchens, while others call for a smooth face. Maple and birch have a tight grain that paints smoothly. MDF doors paint well on the faces, but raw edges swell if they get wet, so they have to be sealed. Thermofoil and laminate are a different problem: the plastic skin can peel away from the core, and paint over a lifting skin will fail with it.

Built-in cabinets in older houses may already carry several coats of paint. If those coats are thick, sagging or chipped at the edges, stripping some or all of them gives a better result than adding more.

• Remove doors, drawer fronts and hardware; label each piece
• Degrease, scuff-sand and clean before priming
• Use a bonding primer suited to the surface
• Finish with a hard cabinet enamel and allow full cure time before rehanging

Paint vs. replace

Painting makes sense when the boxes are sound, the layout works and the doors are solid. It doesn't fix sagging shelves, water-damaged sink bases or a layout that no longer suits how you cook. If the boxes are failing, new paint just postpones a replacement. Our comparison of refinishing vs. replacing kitchen cabinets walks through the trade-offs, and the cabinet painting process post explains each step.

Painting also keeps the countertop, plumbing and backsplash in place, which avoids disturbing tile, stone or old plaster walls behind the boxes. In a house where those walls are original, that is a real advantage.

Older painted cabinets and lead

Census counts place 85.8% of homes here in construction years before 1980. If your kitchen has painted cabinets or built-ins that date from before 1978, the old layers may contain lead, and sanding them creates exactly the kind of dust the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule is meant to control. Paid work that disturbs that paint has to be done by a certified firm using lead-safe methods. Newer factory-finished cabinets don't raise the same concern. See our lead-safe painting page for details.

Two kitchens under one roof

With 23.9% of housing units in two-unit buildings, a two-family owner may be weighing two kitchens: their own and the one in the rental unit. Those jobs can have different goals. An owner's kitchen might get a color change and new hardware; a rental kitchen may call for a durable, easily touched-up neutral finished between leases. If you plan to do the rental kitchen yourself, note that the EPA's homeowner exemption doesn't extend to a unit you rent out.

For a house in Arlington Heights, East Arlington or elsewhere in town, cabinet work can be paired with walls and trim; see interior painting in Arlington.