Refacing · Davie, FL

When Refacing Beats Replacing Cabinets in Davie

When refacing beats replacing cabinets in Davie comes down to two questions, and neither is about money. Are the boxes structurally sound, and does the layout stay where it is? If both answers are yes, refacing gets you the same kitchen for less. If either is no, refacing is the more expensive option, because it spends real money on boxes that come out anyway.

Job cost · boxes stay: $28,458; JLC Cost vs Value 2025, national
Resale value: $32,141; 113% recouped

When refacing beats replacing cabinets in Davie: a finished kitchen with white shaker doors, a light quartz countertop and a stainless undermount sink under the window

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The Test That Decides It

Open the cabinet under the sink and look at the floor of it and the back corners. That is where a slow supply line or a loose drain shows up first, and it is the single most useful thing a homeowner can check before calling anyone. A box that is soft to the thumb, swollen at the seams, or stained dark at the base is telling you it has already absorbed water. New doors on that box are a payment on account: the box comes out within a couple of years and takes the new fronts with it.

The rest of the check is quicker. Press on a shelf and see if it flexes. Open and close a drawer and watch whether the box racks. Look at how the cabinet is built, because a solid wood or plywood carcass is worth keeping and a particleboard one that has already been wet is not. Face frames can be repaired, skinned, and made flat again. Boxes cannot, and no finish hides a box that moves.

What the Numbers Are Actually Measuring

The most useful number in this decision is not a price, it is a ratio, and it belongs to a job with a very specific shape. The Journal of Light Construction defines its minor kitchen remodel as a functional but dated 200-square-foot kitchen with 30 linear feet of cabinetry, where the cabinet boxes are left in place and the fronts are replaced with new shaker-style panels and hardware, along with the countertop, the sink and faucet, the range and refrigerator, and the flooring.

That is a refacing job with appliances attached, and in the 2025 national edition it costs $28,458 and returns $32,141 at resale. It recovers 113% of what it costs. Two things about that figure are worth saying plainly: it is national rather than South Florida, and it describes that whole package, not a door swap on its own. It is not a quote and it is not this company's price. It is the shape of the job that pays for itself.

A finished kitchen with white shaker cabinets, a quartz-topped island with five stools and three pendant lights above it

When Replacing Is the Cheaper Answer

Refacing cannot move a cabinet six inches. If the reason you are remodeling is that the fridge blocks the walkway, the sink is under the wrong window, or there is nowhere to stand while the oven is open, then the layout is the problem and new fronts leave the problem exactly where it was. Refacing preserves the footprint. That is its whole advantage when the footprint is good, and its whole limitation when it is not.

The other case is interior fittings. If the drawers are wooden runners rather than slides, if the wall cabinets are shallow, if half the lower boxes are a single cavern with one shelf, then most of what makes a kitchen pleasant to use is inside the box, and refacing does not touch the inside. Some of that can be retrofitted and some cannot. It is worth pricing both ways before deciding, because a refaced kitchen with the original interior still opens the way the original one did.

What This Means in a Davie Kitchen

More than half the houses in Davie were built before 1990, and the median is around 1987. That puts a lot of local kitchens near the age where this question stops being cosmetic: the American housing stock reached a median age of 44 years in 2023, up from 28 in 1993, and Davie sits inside that curve rather than outside it. Cabinets from that period are often solid plywood boxes with dated fronts, which is the best possible candidate for refacing. They are also old enough that the sink base has had thirty-odd years to find a leak, which is why the check comes first and the quote comes second.

A finished galley kitchen with two facing runs of white shaker cabinets, quartz countertops, a stainless range and a window over the sink

The two schedules and the price bands behind this decision both come from our Davie kitchen remodeling page.

Common Questions

What are the downsides of refacing kitchen cabinets in Davie?

Three, and they are all about what stays. The layout stays, so nothing moves. The interior stays, so shallow shelves and wooden drawer runners stay shallow and wooden unless they are retrofitted separately. And the boxes stay, which is an advantage when they are sound and a liability when they are not. There is also a cosmetic one worth knowing in advance: the inside of the box is the surface you already have, so if you dislike how the interior looks now, you will still dislike it afterward.

Is cabinet refacing worth the money in a Davie kitchen?

It is when the boxes are sound and the layout works, and it is not when either of those fails. The trade is that you are spending on the surfaces you see and touch and skipping the demolition, the new carcasses, the labor to hang and level them, and usually the countertop. When the boxes deserve to stay, that is money that goes entirely into the visible result. When they do not, it is money spent twice.

What are the signs that it is time to replace kitchen cabinets in a Davie home instead?

Water damage at the sink base, boxes that rack or flex when you open a drawer, particleboard that has swollen at the seams, and any layout change at all. Add one more that people miss: if several boxes have been repaired before, or if the runs were built to different depths over the years, a reface will make mismatched cabinets look like matching cabinets with mismatched openings. At that point new boxes are the cheaper way to get a kitchen that reads as one kitchen.

Recent Kitchen Remodeling Projects in Davie

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

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

The full scope of what refacing covers, what belongs in the quote, and what moves the number is on our Davie cabinet refacing page.

Want to know which one your kitchen is?

Send a photo of the inside of the sink base and tell us whether the layout has to change. You will hear which of the two answers applies to your kitchen before anybody quotes you a number, including the answer that refacing is the wrong call.

Call (786) 780-2728