Cabinet Painting throughout Marlborough, MA.

Cabinet painting suits kitchens where the layout works and the boxes are solid, but the finish looks tired or dated. Whether that describes your kitchen depends partly on when the house was built and how many times the room has been redone since.

The local housing record gives a rough map. Census estimates show 15.4% of units built in the 1960s, 16.0% in the 1980s, and another 16.0% in 2000 or later, with the median year at 1974. A kitchen original to any of those decades will be built differently, and that shapes the prep.

Reading your cabinets by material

The build date of the house is only a loose guide, since a kitchen may have been redone more than once. A close look at the door edges, the inside of the sink base and the hinge holes tells more than the build date.

• Previously painted boxes: the old enamel needs deglossing, and testing for lead if it predates 1978
• Oak doors: an open, deep grain that telegraphs through paint unless it is grain-filled first
• Maple doors: a tight, smooth grain that takes primer and enamel well
• Particleboard or laminate boxes that have swollen near the sink: usually better replaced than coated
• Thermofoil doors: paintable only where the film is still firmly bonded

Refinish or replace

Paint changes color and sheen; it does not fix a layout, sagging shelves or doors that have delaminated. If the boxes are sound and you like where everything is, refinishing keeps the countertops and plumbing in place and avoids a demolition. If you plan to move the sink, add an island or change the footprint, new cabinets are the better spend.

Our refinish vs. replace guide and the blog post on painting versus replacing cabinets go through the trade-offs in more detail, including hardware, door style and resale.

The prep that decides how long the finish lasts

A film of cooking grease keeps primer from bonding. Sound prep removes doors and drawer fronts, labels them by position, and degreases every surface before any sanding. Next comes a bonding primer, then a cabinet-grade enamel built for hard use rather than a wall paint. Spraying, brushing and rolling each leave a different texture; the comparison of application methods explains the differences.

In a kitchen original to a pre-1978 house, older painted cabinets or the trim around them may contain lead. Sanding that paint as paid work is covered by the EPA's renovation rule once more than six square feet per room is disturbed, so testing first is sensible. Our lead-safe painting page explains the process.

Two-family homes and rental kitchens

About 17.2% of the city's housing units sit in two- to four-unit buildings, and 44.0% of occupied homes are rented. If you own a two-family or a rental unit, refinishing cabinets between tenants is a way to refresh a kitchen without a full remodel; scheduling around an empty unit also gives the enamel time to cure before daily use.

For the rest of the room, the interior painting page covers walls and ceilings, and condo owners can read about association rules on the condo painting page.