Cabinet Refinishing in Ottawa

Telling solid wood from veneer before you commit

Refinishing only works on material that can be sanded. Solid wood doors and solid wood face frames can be taken back and rebuilt; a thermofoil door or a thin veneer panel cannot, because there is not enough material above the substrate to sand through the old finish safely. We check the door edges and the panel construction at the quote and tell you plainly which of your components can be refinished and which cannot. Where a kitchen turns out to be thermofoil or MDF throughout, spraying it as a painted finish is the honest answer instead — the route most of the builder kitchens we see in Barrhaven take.

Chemical stripping versus sanding back

Old cabinet finishes are usually a catalyzed lacquer or conversion varnish, and both are hard. On flat panels sanding is faster and more controlled. On raised panels, profiled rails and any carved detail, sanding rounds over the crisp edges that give the door its shape, so those come back chemically and get neutralized before anything else happens. Most kitchens end up needing both methods on different components.

Colour matching a new stain to existing woodwork

Stain reads differently on oak, maple, birch and cherry, and it reads differently again on a door that has had forty years of UV on the side facing the window. We make sample panels on your own offcuts or on the inside of a door, look at them in your kitchen at the time of day you use it, and adjust from there. Going lighter than the existing tone takes a full strip and sometimes a bleaching step, which we price separately so you can see what that choice costs.

Repairs, water damage and replacement doors

The sink base and the cabinet beside the dishwasher are where we find damage: swollen bottoms, delaminated panels, lifted veneer edges. Small damage is cut out and patched. Where a door is beyond saving we can source a replacement in the same profile and species from a local supplier and finish it alongside the others, which is almost always cheaper than redoing the whole kitchen because of one bad door.

Topcoating for a working kitchen

The finish coat has to survive steam over the kettle, splash beside the sink and hands on the drawer above the dishwasher. We use a cabinet-grade clear topcoat over the new stain, two coats, sanded between, applied to the door faces, edges and backs so the panel is sealed on every side. Sealing only the visible face is the single most common shortcut and the reason refinished doors cup a year later.

• Solid wood doors, drawer fronts and face frames
• Chemical stripping on profiled and carved components
• Custom stain matching against your existing woodwork
• Water damage repair at sink and dishwasher bases
• Matching replacement doors sourced locally
• Two-coat cabinet-grade clear topcoat, all six sides