Refinish when the boxes and the doors are sound and only the colour is wrong. Reface when the boxes are sound but the doors are tired, dated, or the wrong style. Replace when the boxes are failing or the layout is the real problem. That is the whole decision. The rest of this post is how to check each part of your kitchen honestly before you spend anything.
The box, or carcass, decides whether the first two options are even on the table. Open the sink base and press on the bottom panel. Look at a raw edge inside a drawer opening. Plywood shows thin layers of wood grain and stays flat and firm even after years of drips. Particleboard shows fine pressed chips and swells at the bottom edge once it has taken on water, and a swollen edge will not hold a hinge screw or sit flat under a new door. Solid wood boxes in older homes are usually fine unless they were cut down on site.
Sound plywood or solid wood boxes: refinish and reface are both open to you. Swollen or crumbling particleboard: replace, and do not spend a dollar on new fronts first. Our post on plywood versus particleboard boxes shows what to look for.
Refinishing and refacing keep every cabinet exactly where it is. If the layout is what bothers you, neither one helps. It makes a frustrating kitchen a better-looking frustrating kitchen. Stand at the stove and count the steps to the fridge, the sink, and the drawer where the knives live. Notice whether you crouch into base cabinets for pots that would live in deep drawers. Ask whether you want an island, a tall pantry, or the wall gone. If any of that is on the list, you are choosing a new kitchen, and the honest move is to plan it as one.
Refinishing works on solid wood and wood veneer doors that are flat, intact, and dry. It does not work well on peeling thermofoil, MDF that has swelled at the bottom edge, or doors that have been painted on site more than once. If the doors are past saving but the boxes are not, that is refacing: new doors and drawer fronts in painted slab MDF, rift white oak veneer, or walnut veneer, made to your existing openings, with matching skins on the exposed ends.
Hardware settles a lot of borderline cases. Hinges that have stripped their screws, drawers that stick on old runners, and doors that never quite close are not fixed by paint. Refacing normally replaces hinges and slides with soft-close versions at the same time as the doors. A new DADO kitchen comes with soft-close hinges and slides on everything, and that hardware carries a lifetime warranty. Wood and laminate finishes typically carry a one-year manufacturer warranty.
Selling within a year or two: a refinish or a reface gets the kitchen photographed well and does not tie up money you will not recover. Renewing a rental: the same logic, with durable painted MDF or laminate fronts. Staying ten years or more: fix the layout now if it is wrong, because you will pay for it in daily use every day you do not. A kitchen you cook in for a decade is the one place where the full replacement is the cheaper choice over time.
We do not publish a price for refinishing or refacing because it depends almost entirely on your cabinets: how many doors and 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, from photos and measurements or on site. It costs a fraction of a new kitchen, because the boxes, the counter, and the trades stay where they are.
A new kitchen has published ranges. A smaller kitchen plans at about $18,000 to $28,000, most projects land between $30,000 and $50,000, and a large high-end build starts past $100,000. Cabinetry alone starts at about $15,000. Those are planning ranges, not quotes, and our post on what a custom kitchen costs in Vancouver explains what moves them. They are the yardstick for deciding whether a refresh is worth doing at all.
Run your room through the Vancouver Kitchen Cost Calculator to see the range for the replacement path, then bring photos of your sink base and a drawer opening and book a free consultation. We will tell you which of the three your kitchen actually needs, even when the answer is the cheapest one.