Cabinet refacing keeps your existing cabinet boxes and replaces everything you see and touch: the doors, the drawer fronts, the hinges, and the handles. It makes sense when the boxes are sound and the layout already works. It does not make sense when the boxes are swollen particleboard or the layout fights you every time you cook. DADO now does this kind of refresh on existing Vancouver kitchens, quoted per project after we have looked at the cabinets.
A refacing job swaps the fronts and leaves the carcass. New doors and drawer fronts are made to the exact sizes of your openings, in a slab or shaker profile, in painted MDF, rift white oak veneer, walnut veneer, or a durable laminate. Exposed end panels get new matching skins so the sides read the same as the doors. Hinges and drawer slides are usually replaced at the same time with soft-close versions, because old hinges rarely line up with new doors and it is the cheapest moment to do it. Handles are new, or the doors are made with integrated handles so nothing sticks out.
What stays is the box, the layout, the counter, the sink, and the appliances. That is the whole point. Most of the cost in a new kitchen is in building and installing new boxes and in the trades that follow. Refacing skips almost all of that.
The boxes are plywood or solid wood, they are square, and they are dry. Open a base cabinet door and look at the exposed edge of the side panel. Plywood shows thin layers of wood grain. If the floor of the sink base is flat and firm and the shelves are not sagging, the carcass will outlast another set of doors.
The layout works. You can cook in it without crossing the room for the things you use most, the fridge and the stove and the sink sit in a sensible triangle, and you are not wishing for an island that is not there. If the only thing wrong with the kitchen is how it looks and how the doors feel, refacing fixes exactly that.
Timing matters too. If you are selling within a year or two, or you are renewing a rental, a refaced kitchen with new soft-close hardware often does the job a full replacement would do, for a fraction of the money.
Swollen particleboard is the clearest no. Particleboard boxes take on water at the bottom of the sink base and along the toe kick, and once the edges have puffed up they will not hold a hinge screw or sit flat under a new door. Putting a new front on a failing box is money spent on a kitchen that still needs replacing.
A layout that fights the cook is the second no. Refacing cannot move a wall, add an island, turn a run of doors into deep drawers, or bring a tall pantry into a room that has none. If the frustration is where things are rather than what they look like, you are describing a new kitchen, not a refresh.
Odd sizes and damaged frames are the third. Boxes that were cut down on site, face frames that are out of square, and doors that never closed properly will not improve with new fronts. New made-to-order boxes fix that in one step.
We do not publish a number for refacing because it depends almost entirely on your kitchen: how many doors and drawer fronts, which finish, whether the end panels need skins, and whether the hinges and slides are being replaced. We quote it per project after a look at the existing cabinets, either at the showroom with photos and measurements or on site. What we can say plainly is that it costs a fraction of a new kitchen, because the boxes, the counter, and the trades stay where they are.
For comparison, a new DADO kitchen runs from about $18,000 for a smaller kitchen to past $100,000 for a large high-end build, with most projects landing between $30,000 and $50,000. Cabinetry alone starts at about $15,000. Those are planning ranges, not quotes, and they are the honest yardstick when you are deciding whether a refresh is worth it.
Open the sink base and press on the bottom panel. Look at the raw edges inside a drawer opening and decide whether you are seeing plywood layers or fine chips. Close every door and see whether it sits flat and square against the box. Stand at the stove and count how many steps it takes to reach the fridge, the sink, and the drawer where the knives live. Photograph all of it. Those five things tell us most of what we need to know before we quote.
If you want a number for the other path, the Vancouver Kitchen Cost Calculator gives you a planning range for a new kitchen in three inputs, and our post on what a custom kitchen costs in Vancouver explains what moves that range. When you are ready to talk about your cabinets, book a free consultation at the Kitsilano showroom and bring your photos.