Cabinet refinishing
Honey-oak kitchens from the nineties and two-thousands, where the cabinetry is sound and only the colour and finish have dated.
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Areas we serve
Interior painting, cabinet painting and front door finishing in Grafton.
Two quite different housing stocks in one village, and they need almost opposite work — Victorian-era homes near the centre, modern builds around them. Your local painter for both.
Grafton is really two places for our purposes. There is the older village near the river — frame houses with porches, painted wood outside and softwood trim inside — and there are the subdivisions that went up from the 1990s onward, with vinyl exteriors and builder-grade interiors.
The older houses need what old houses always need: honest preparation. Scraping back to sound material, priming bare timber, re-caulking joints that have opened, and accepting that the prep is most of the labour on any truthful estimate.
The newer houses need something different. Their exteriors are largely maintenance-free by design, so the work moves indoors — repainting builder-grade wall finishes that were applied thin and fast, and dealing with honey-oak kitchens and bathroom vanities that have simply gone out of favour rather than gone bad.
About twenty-five minutes north
Like Cedarburg, Grafton is far enough out that we schedule it in blocks rather than single days. Worth knowing if timing matters to you — tell us the dates at the walkthrough and we will say straight away whether they are holdable.
Book a walkthrough in Grafton
Free, written, itemized and fixed. No obligation and no pressure.
Or call (414) 436-1464
In this neighborhood
What we get asked for most in Grafton
Nineties oak
Oak grain is the thing that gives a refinished kitchen away.
Red oak, which is most of what was fitted here through the nineties, has deep open grain. Paint it directly and the grain telegraphs straight through the finish — the colour changes, but the kitchen still reads as oak, which is usually the opposite of what somebody wanted.
Getting a genuinely smooth painted result on oak means filling that grain first and sanding it back, then building the finish in thin sprayed passes. It is more work than spraying a maple or MDF door and we price it as such, because the alternative is a result you will notice every day.
If you actually like the grain, that is a different and considerably cheaper job — stripping and refinishing in a modern stain and clear coat keeps the timber visible and drops the dated orange tone that most people are really objecting to.
Questions
Common questions in Grafton
Can our oak cabinets be painted so the grain does not show?
Yes, but it is the grain filling that gets you there, not the paint. Open-grain red oak has to be filled and sanded flat before any colour goes on, or the texture reads through every coat. We will show you the difference at the walkthrough and price both, because plenty of people decide the grain is fine once they see what removing it costs.
Our house is fifteen years old and the walls mark if you look at them. Why?
Usually because the original coating was a builder-grade flat applied thin over new drywall, which is the cheapest way to make a house look finished on handover day. It marks and it will not wash. A repaint in a proper washable finish behaves completely differently, and on an occupied family house it is worth the step up.
Do you do exteriors on the newer subdivisions?
Sometimes, but often the honest answer is that there is very little to paint — vinyl and aluminium are not repaint candidates in the way clapboard is. Where there is painted wood, usually trim, soffits, a front door or a pergola, we are glad to. We will tell you if the job is smaller than you thought.
- Insured in Wisconsin
- 1-year written warranty on all work
- Free written estimates
- Locally owned in Glendale
Also serving
Nearby areas we serve
Cabinet painting and front door finishing in Grafton.
Tell us what needs doing — or email a photo — and we’ll tell you what is involved. The walkthrough and the written estimate are free.
(414) 436-1464