are kitchen cabinets repairable?

Question

How repairable are kitchen cabinets?  I saw a property where all the drawers were stolen.  At that point is it better to replace all the kitchen cabinets, or can you get new drawers made?

Bryan Swallow · Answer

The major cost of cabinetry (production line, NOT custom) are the face frames, doors and drawer faces. Generally, the rest of the cabinet is particle board paneling. This would include the boxes, shelves and drawer boxes.

If all your faces and doors are fine, the chepest option is purchasing cabinet boxes and reattaching the faces to them. Replacing doors and and face frames is not too difficult, but cabinets are generally disontinued after a year, so it may become more difficult to find a match. If an exact match is important, I'd recommend your local furniture repairman, a reputable one can match the color/staining dead on 99 out of 100 times.

Robert Mayo · Answer

Thanks -- good info!

Looks like I can chose 1 of 3 quality levels:
1) replace parts
2) reface cabinets
3) replace cabinets

Jon Holdman · Answer

This is the company I used:  Reface Depot. No relationship other than I was able to get the drawer fronts.  Not identical, but then the existing drawer fronts were different than the exiting door fronts.

Steve Babiak · Answer

There are parts suppliers to the re-facing industry online; I think you could order close (if not identical) matches that way.

Jon Holdman · Answer

I repaired the cabinets in my last purchase.  Most were OK, but some of the drawer fronts were damaged or missing, and the sink base was a mess.  I found a place online where I could order the drawer fronts.  They weren't an exact match, but fine for a rental.  I completely rebuilt the sink base and only saved the front.  All DIY for me, probably eight hours total for rebuilding the sink base, replacing the drawer fronts and refinishing everything.  About $150 in parts, mostly the drawer fronts.  Probably would have been another $200-300 to have had someone do the labor.

For a flip, though, I would have replaced them.  It would probably have been $1000-1500 depending on exactly what I put in to just have replaced them with decent quality ones for a flip.  I spent about $1500 on this set of cabinets: