Cabinet Painting in Brookline, MA.

A building's construction date doesn't tell you when its kitchen was last redone, because kitchens get replaced on their own schedule. Brookline's housing spans a wide range: 51.7% of units date from 1939 or earlier, while 10.0% were built in the 1960s and 11.0% in the 1970s, the two largest decades after the prewar stock. That means a cabinet job here could be a remodeled kitchen inside a 1910 house, an original set in a 1970s apartment building, or a painted pantry built-in that is older than anyone living there.

What decides the method is the material of the boxes and doors and the coating on them today. Sorting that out at the start heads off a familiar problem: a finish that chips at the edges within months because it never bonded to the surface underneath.

Paint them or replace them?

Painting makes sense when the cabinet boxes are solid, the doors are flat and sound, and the layout already works. It changes color and finish, not function. Replacement is the better path when the sink base has swollen from leaks, drawers are failing, or you want a different layout, because no coating fixes those.

A middle option is to paint the existing boxes and order new doors and drawer fronts. It keeps the footprint and the countertop in place while changing the style of the room.

What the doors are made of

Each material behaves differently under paint. Open-grain woods such as oak show their grain through paint unless the pores are filled first, a texture you may or may not want. Closed-grain maple, birch and cherry give a smoother result with less filling. MDF paints well on its faces, but its edges soak up primer and need sealing. Factory finishes are hard and slick, so the surface needs cleaning with a degreaser, a thorough scuff sand and a bonding primer before any color goes on.

Thermofoil and some laminates are poor candidates; the vinyl skin can peel on its own over time, and paint on top won't stop that.

• Remove doors, drawer fronts and hardware, and label each piece
• Degrease, scuff sand and clean off sanding dust
• Prime with a product matched to the existing finish
• Fill grain or dings as needed, then two finish coats
• Allow cure time before heavy use; enamel hardens over weeks

Old painted cabinets and lead

In a town where 86.0% of homes date from 1979 or earlier, any cabinet that was painted before 1978, especially a built-in in a pantry, butler's pantry or bathroom, may have lead in its lower layers. Sanding counts as disturbing that paint. The federal minor-repair limit is six square feet per room, and a single set of kitchen doors is well past that, so paid work on them falls under EPA certification rules and Massachusetts licensing for lead-safe renovation.

Testing first answers the question. If lead is present, keeping intact layers and scuffing only what's needed for adhesion, inside containment with HEPA cleanup, is usually better than stripping to bare wood. Our lead-safe painting page covers what that looks like.

Cabinet work in condos and rental units

Just over half of Brookline's housing units (50.8%) are in buildings with five or more units. In those buildings, odor and noise travel, elevators may need reserving, and management may limit work hours. Ask whether the doors will be finished on site or elsewhere, what products are planned, and how long the kitchen will be unusable, then check the answers against your building's rules.

Renters occupy 53.1% of occupied homes in town. If you own one of those rental units, painting during a vacancy is simplest, and the lead rules apply to rental units built before 1978 just as they do to owner-occupied ones. Condo owners can read more on our Brookline condo painting page, and anyone painting the rest of the kitchen at the same time can see interior painting in Brookline.