Cabinet Refacing Davie, FL
Cabinet refacing Davie keeps every box in your kitchen exactly where it is and replaces every door, every drawer front and every hinge. That is why it costs a fraction of new cabinets, and why the boxes have to be sound before anybody sells it to you.
- In your house
- 3–5 days
- Order to install
- 2–4 weeks
- Warranty
- 2 years
- License
- CGC1524886
- Licensed & insured: CGC1524886
- 500+ kitchens completed
- 2-year workmanship warranty
- Answered 7 AM–10 PM, 7 days
Refacing is defined by what stays. The cabinet boxes stay, screwed to the same walls, in the same places, at the same sizes. What comes off is everything you touch and everything you see: every door, every drawer front, every hinge and knob. The exposed face frames and the end panels get skinned in a new surface that matches the new doors, and when it is done the room reads as a new kitchen because every visible surface in it is new. What is behind the doors is the kitchen you already own.
That is the whole trick, and it is also the whole risk. You are buying faces. If the thing holding those faces up is sound, it is the best value in this trade. If it is not, you have spent five thousand dollars hanging new doors on a box that is on its way out.
When Refacing Is the Right Call, and When It Is Not
There are four kitchens where refacing is clearly the right answer, and three where it is the wrong one. It is worth knowing which one you have before you collect a single estimate, because the companies that only sell refacing will not draw the line for you.
The boxes are sound and you cannot stand the doors. This is the case refacing exists for. Honey oak from 1987, almond laminate, dark cherry that made the room feel like a basement. The cabinets work, the drawers run, nothing is soft, and what you actually want is for the kitchen to stop looking like the decade it was built in. Refacing gets you that for a third to a half of what replacement costs, in days instead of weeks.
The layout is fine and you know it. If you are not fighting the room, if the fridge does not block a door, there is counter beside the range and two people can pass, then the cabinets are in the right places and moving them buys you nothing. Refacing is the honest project for a kitchen whose only problem is its face.
You are selling in the next year or two. Doors and hardware are what a buyer sees in the listing photos and what they touch at the showing. Refacing resets that read without the disruption, the permits or the timeline of a real remodel, and it is the cheapest way to find out whether the kitchen was ever the problem.
You want your kitchen back this month. A reface is three to five days of a crew in your house. The old doors come off in the morning and new ones are hanging by the end of it. You cook in your kitchen the whole time except for the counter space we borrow.
Where it is the wrong call, and we will say so before you pay us. First: when the boxes are going. Most cabinets in this market are particleboard, and the reason that matters is in how the panel is made: it is bonded with a urea-formaldehyde resin because, as the wood industry's own reference handbook puts it, most applications are interior, and the wax added at the press improves short-term moisture resistance. Thirty-five Davie summers under a sink is not short term. Where it shows is always the same place: the floor of the sink base, the back corners, the bottom edge of the stile beside the dishwasher. A hinge screw needs sound material to bite into, and swollen particleboard is not sound material.
Second: when the layout is the complaint. Refacing changes no dimension in the room. If the aisle is too narrow or there is nowhere to set a plate down, new doors will not fix it and you will be annoyed about it three weeks after we leave.
Third: when you want the soffit gone. Taking out the boxed-in bulkhead above your wall cabinets means the cabinets need to grow to meet the ceiling, and cabinets that need to grow are new cabinets. That is a different job with a different number, and it is the single most common reason a reface turns into a replacement halfway through the conversation. The three ways to go are laid out side by side on cabinet maker, with what each one costs and what it gets you.
The Three Surfaces You Can Reface With
Every refacing quote you get will be built on one of three surfaces. They are not tiers of the same product: they behave differently, they fail differently, and the spread between the cheapest and the dearest is more than double.
One thing applies to all three, and it is not the doors. What separates a reface that looks new from one that looks refaced is the exposed end panels: the sides of the cabinet run that face into the room, at the end of the counter and beside the refrigerator. Skinned to match, nobody can see that anything was done. Left as the original oak or laminate, every person who walks in sees exactly what happened, and you paid for the doors anyway.
Rigid thermofoil, the cheapest face in the kitchen
A vinyl film heated and vacuum-pressed over a routed MDF door, wrapped in one piece so there is no seam and no grain. Dead flat, easy to clean, available in white and a handful of solid colors, and the least expensive door on the market by a wide margin. Its weakness is heat: the film is bonded with an adhesive, sustained heat is what releases it, and the doors that go first are the ones beside the oven and above the range. Bought knowing that, it is a genuinely good value for a rental, a flip, or a kitchen you intend to redo properly in five years.
Real wood veneer, the one most people actually want
A thin layer of real wood in oak, maple, cherry or walnut, bonded to the face frames and end panels, with doors in the same species and stain. It moves like wood because it is wood, it takes a stain the way the rest of your trim does, and it is what makes a reface read as a wood kitchen rather than a wrapped one. It costs more than thermofoil and it is less forgiving of a face frame that was never sanded flat. This is the middle of the market and where most Davie refaces land.
Solid wood doors, where refacing stops being a compromise
Veneer on the frames and end panels, but the doors and drawer fronts themselves built in solid stock in a five-piece shaker in maple, or a paint-grade door if the kitchen is going white. Nobody can tell this apart from new cabinets, because the only part of a new cabinet you ever see is the part you just replaced. It is the top of the refacing range and it still lands below new semi-custom cabinets.
How a Cabinet Refacing Job Runs, Step by Step
- We look under the sink, at your house, free. Before anything else we open the sink base, put a light in it and press the floor of the cabinet and the back corners. We check whether the boxes are level and square, whether the face frames are solid enough to hold hinge screws, and whether anything has been quietly leaking. This is the five minutes that decides whether the rest of the list happens at all.
- Measure every opening, not the room. Refacing is a door-by-door job: each opening is measured individually, because a run built in 1987 is not a run of identical openings. Doors are made to those numbers, and a sixteenth of an inch of drift across eight uppers is what makes a finished run look crooked.
- A written number before anything is ordered. One price, itemized: doors and drawer fronts, the skin on the face frames, the exposed end panels, toe kicks, crown and light rail, hinges, hardware, and the removal and disposal of the old doors. It does not move unless you approve a change of scope.
- You choose the surface, the door style and the hardware. Off real samples in your kitchen, under your light, held against your counter and your floor. A door color chosen in a showroom is chosen under the wrong light.
- The doors get made while you keep using your kitchen. Two to four weeks, and during all of it your existing doors are still hanging and your kitchen still works. Nothing comes off until the new doors are built and in our shop. That is an operating rule, not a scheduling preference.
- Three to five days of installation. Old doors, drawer fronts and hinges come off and go with us. Face frames get cleaned, sanded flat and skinned; end panels are wrapped; toe kicks and any filler strips are covered. Then new hinges are set, doors are hung, and every one of them is adjusted on all three axes until the gaps between them are even down the run.
- The walkthrough, with the drawers open. We go through the whole kitchen with you, open and close everything, and write down anything that is not right before we ask for the last payment. Doors settle slightly in the first weeks in this climate; the adjustment visit for that is included and you should use it.
What Cabinet Refacing Costs in Davie
Refacing is priced off the run and not the room, because what you are buying is a count of doors and a length of face frame. Our estimate is $250 to $400 per linear foot installed, which on a typical Davie kitchen of around thirty feet of cabinet run puts the job between seven and twelve thousand dollars. Those are our numbers, not the market's. Every refacing company prices this differently, some of them per door and some per kitchen, so a range you read anywhere is a starting point for a conversation and nothing more. The only figure that binds us is the written estimate, itemized, after we have measured your kitchen.
$7,500 to $12,000
The surface is what moves you across that band: a thermofoil kitchen sits at the bottom of it, real wood veneer in the middle, solid-wood doors with veneered frames at the top. New cabinets in the same kitchen, stock and installed with tear-out, generally start where refacing ends and go up from there, and semi-custom is a different conversation entirely. Half to a third of replacement is the honest way to describe the saving.
The comparison that traps people
A refacing price per linear foot and a cabinet price per linear foot do not measure the same thing. Refacing is almost entirely labor, so its rate includes the work. A cabinet quoted per linear foot is usually the box only, before delivery, installation, fillers, crown, toe kick, hauling away the old kitchen, and the counter that has to come off and go back on because the boxes changed. Comparing the two rates side by side makes new cabinets look far closer to refacing than they are. Compare the two finished totals instead, and make sure both of them include tear-out.
What has to be in a refacing quote
| The line | What it covers | Who leaves it out |
|---|---|---|
| Exposed end panels | the cabinet sides that face into the room and beside the fridge | very often, and it is the line that shows |
| The face frames | skinned in the same surface as the doors, sanded flat first | quoted as "doors and hardware" |
| Hinges | new concealed soft-close, bored and plated to the new doors | quoted as an upgrade |
| Toe kicks and fillers | the strip at the floor and the gaps at the walls | almost always |
| Crown and light rail | the trim at the top of the wall cabinets, matched to the new surface | quoted separately |
| Removal and disposal | the old doors, fronts and hardware, hauled away | assumed |
Ours are inside the refacing number and itemized, so you can see them. That is not generosity: an estimate missing six known lines is not a price, it is an opening position, and every one of those lines reappears later at a worse rate.
What actually moves the number
The count of doors and drawer fronts first, not the square footage of the room. A galley with twenty-two doors costs less than an L with thirty-four, in the same house. After that: the surface, whether the doors are flat or have a routed profile, how many exposed end panels the run has, whether you are also replacing drawer boxes and slides, and whether any face frame needs repair before it can take a skin. Your zip code is not on that list. We charge the same in Davie, Weston and Fort Lauderdale.
One question worth asking whoever quotes you
Ask who makes the doors, and whether that door line is certified to the industry's own performance standard. The cabinet trade's association runs a certification in which doors are opened and closed through a full 90-degree swing for 25,000 cycles and the finish is tested against heat, humidity and the household liquids that actually get spilled on a kitchen. That standard is the difference between a door built to hang for twenty years and a door built to look right on installation day, and the two are indistinguishable when they arrive. It costs you nothing to ask, and it explains most of the spread between three refacing estimates.
Why Choose Us
We look under your sink before we quote, and we will talk you out of this job. Refacing is the smaller sale and we would rather lose it than hang eight hundred dollars of doors on a box that is going to fail. If the sink base has gone, you hear it at the measurement, with the cost to correct it, and you decide with the information instead of finding out on installation morning.
Nothing comes off until the new doors are built and in our shop. Your kitchen keeps working through the two to four weeks of fabrication, and the disruption is the three to five days it actually takes to do the work. Crews that pull your doors first and leave you with open shelving for a month are making a scheduling choice, and it is worth asking about before you sign.
The end panels and the toe kicks are inside our number. They are the two lines most commonly left out of a refacing quote and they are exactly the two that decide whether the finished kitchen looks new or looks refaced.
The crews work under Gaven Constructions, license CGC1524886, insured, with a two-year workmanship warranty on the installation. And someone answers this phone from 7 AM to 10 PM every day, which is the part most people end up caring about while they are collecting three estimates.
Licensed, Insured, and Permitted in Davie
Refacing is about as far from regulated work as a kitchen job gets: nothing structural moves, no plumbing is touched, no circuit changes, and every cabinet stays screwed to the wall it was on. What would pull it into review is a change of scope: taking out a soffit, moving a cabinet, adding a circuit for under-cabinet lighting. The Town of Davie works from Florida Building Code 104.1, which requires an application and a permit before regulated work is altered or installed, and its Building Department makes that determination case by case. It is theirs to make and not ours, so we do not publish a table telling you which side of the line your job falls on. What we publish is when you find out: in the written estimate, priced, before you approve anything.
The other rule worth knowing is one nobody mentions and it is about what you are bringing into your house. New doors and drawer fronts are composite wood products: MDF, particleboard or hardwood plywood under whatever the surface is. The EPA sets federal formaldehyde emission limits for them, with the requirement that after March 22, 2019 composite wood products must be labeled as TSCA Title VI compliant. That label is on the product, and you are entitled to see it on doors going into a room where your family eats.
- License
- CGC1524886 Certified General Contractor, verifiable in the Florida DBPR licensee search.
- Insurance
- Insured and bonded Certificates are available before any work is scheduled.
- Workmanship warranty
- 2 years On installation labor. Most of this market publishes one.
- Permits and design
- Priced before approval Requirements vary by project scope. Any required permitting, drawings, engineering, or design services are identified and priced before the project is approved.
- Who contracts the work
- Gaven Constructions Kitchen Remodeler Davie was acquired by Gaven Constructions, a licensed contractor since 2015. Every estimate and invoice is issued in that name, which is what puts the license behind the job.
Common Questions
How much does cabinet refacing cost in Davie, FL?
Our estimate runs $250 to $400 per linear foot installed, which puts a typical Davie kitchen of around thirty feet of cabinet run at $7,500 to $12,000. That is our range and not a market average; the number that binds us is the written estimate, after the measurement. What moves you across that band is the surface: rigid thermofoil at the bottom, real wood veneer in the middle, solid-wood doors with veneered face frames at the top. The count of doors and drawer fronts matters more than the size of the room: a galley with twenty-two doors costs less than an L-shaped kitchen with thirty-four in the same house. Be careful comparing that per-foot rate against a per-foot price for new cabinets: the refacing number is almost all labor and includes the work, while a cabinet number is usually the box before delivery, installation, trim and tear-out. Compare finished totals, not rates.
Is refacing cheaper than replacing kitchen cabinets in Davie, and by how much?
Yes, and generally by a third to a half. The reason is that the most expensive parts of a cabinet replacement are the parts refacing does not buy: the boxes themselves, the labor to demolish and haul away the old ones, the labor to hang and level new ones, and very often the countertop, which usually cannot come off a set of old cabinets and go back onto new ones intact. Refacing skips all of that and spends the money on the only surfaces you see. The catch is that the saving is real only if the boxes deserve to stay. On a kitchen whose sink base has already gone soft, refacing is not cheaper than replacement. It is a payment on account, because the box comes out within a couple of years and takes the new doors with it.
How long does cabinet refacing take in Davie, and can I use my kitchen while it happens?
Two to four weeks from the day you approve the order to the day the crew arrives, and three to five days of work in the house. Those are different numbers and the second is the one that affects your life. The weeks are fabrication: your doors are being built to the measurements of your specific openings, and during all of it your existing doors are still hanging and your kitchen still works normally. Nothing comes off until the new doors are finished and in our shop. On installation days the old doors and hinges come off, the face frames are prepped and skinned, and new doors go on. You lose counter space and the contents of a few cabinets, not the kitchen. Some companies pull the doors first and order after. Ask.
How do I know if the cabinets in my Davie kitchen can be refaced at all?
It comes down to the boxes, and specifically to three places. The floor of the sink base: press it, and if it gives at all, that box is finished. The back corners of the base cabinets, where a slow supply-line drip lands and sits. And the face frames themselves, particularly the stile beside the dishwasher, because new hinges are screwed into that frame and a screw needs sound material to hold. If those three are dry and firm, and the boxes are square and still tight to the wall, your kitchen is a refacing candidate regardless of how bad the doors look. Ugly doors say nothing about the box behind them. This is a five-minute check with a flashlight and it is the first thing we do at the measurement, before we talk about door styles.
What is the difference between refacing and refinishing cabinets in a Davie kitchen?
Refacing replaces the doors and drawer fronts with new ones and puts a new surface on the face frames. Refinishing keeps the doors you already have and strips, sands and recoats them. Refinishing is the cheaper of the two and it only makes sense in a narrow case: the doors have to be solid wood, structurally sound, and in a style you are willing to keep, because refinishing changes the color and nothing else. A raised-panel oak door refinished in white is still a raised-panel oak door, with the grain telegraphing through the paint. Refacing changes the style, the profile, the hardware and the hinges, which is what most people mean when they say they want a new kitchen. If your doors are laminate or thermofoil, refinishing is not on the table at all: there is nothing under the surface to refinish.
Do thermofoil cabinet doors hold up in a Davie kitchen?
They hold up to humidity fine, and to heat poorly, which is the opposite of what most people assume here. Thermofoil is a vinyl film bonded to an MDF core, and heat is what releases the adhesive. In practice the doors that fail are the two next to a heat source, the one beside a wall oven and the one above a range. They fail by peeling at a corner or an edge, which cannot be repaired, only replaced. The rest of the run can look new for fifteen years. If you want thermofoil and you have a self-cleaning oven, a heat shield on the adjacent cabinet is part of the job and not an upsell. If you cook heavily, spend the difference on wood veneer and stop thinking about it.
Can you reface my cabinets if I want the soffit above them removed, in a Davie house?
Not as a reface, and this is the most common way a refacing project turns into something else. The boxed-in bulkhead above your wall cabinets is there because the cabinets stop short of the ceiling. Take it out and you are left with a gap that has to be filled, which means the wall cabinets have to get taller, and a cabinet that changes size is a new cabinet, not a refaced one. There are three honest ways out of it: leave the soffit and reface, remove the soffit and replace the wall cabinets while refacing the bases, or price the whole kitchen. We will quote whichever you want, but we will not quote the first one and then discover the third one on demolition day.
Recent Kitchen Remodeling Projects in Davie
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Kitchen opened to the living room, with a seated island Luxury kitchen remodeling -
Galley kitchen opened up on one wall Galley kitchen remodeling -
Island cabinetry with seating and a full perimeter run Kitchen island cabinetry -
Refaced cabinets, shaker fronts and a tile backsplash Cabinet refacing
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Cabinets refinished in navy under the existing granite Cabinet refinishing -
Drawer bank under the cooktop, pantry beside the fridge Custom kitchen cabinets -
Counter at two heights, open underneath Accessible kitchen remodeling -
A wider walkway between the wall run and the island Kitchen layout redesign
Refacing is one of three ways to deal with the cabinets you have. The other two, and which of them your kitchen actually needs, are on cabinet maker.
Open the cabinet under your sink, take one photo of the floor of it, and send it to us.
That photo decides whether refacing is even on the table, and it takes you fifteen seconds. If the floor is dry and square we will price the reface. If it has swelled, we will tell you that first and you will have saved yourself three estimates for a job you should not buy.
Call (786) 780-2728