Door & Entryway Spray Finishing
Your front door is the one surface every visitor looks at from three feet away. We spray it to a factory-smooth finish — including sidelights, transoms, jambs and casing.
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Service
Cabinet painting and refinishing.
Kitchen cabinet painting that leaves you the boxes you already have. Doors and drawer fronts sprayed flat in a booth we bring to you, not brushed in place, for a factory-grade finish.
Kitchen cabinet painting keeps the boxes, the layout and usually the hardware, and changes everything you actually look at. Doors and drawer fronts come off, get sprayed flat in a booth we set up inside your house, and go back on in about a week — typically starting at $2,500 for smaller kitchens, against many times that to replace.
Most kitchens people dislike are structurally fine. The boxes are solid, the layout works, the drawers run true — the finish is simply dated, or worn through around the handles and above the range. Replacing all of it is an enormous expense to solve a surface problem.
Refinishing changes the color and the finish while keeping the carcasses, the layout and usually the hardware. It costs a fraction of replacement, it takes about a week rather than a month, and there’s no demolition, no new countertop template, and no skip in the driveway.
The reason refinishing has a mixed reputation is that it’s frequently done badly. Cabinets that were brushed in place, over grease, without deglossing, will chip around the handles within a year and confirm every fear people have about the idea. Done properly — degreased, sanded, bonded, sprayed with a coating built for cabinetry — it holds up like a factory finish, because it essentially is one.
Our process
About a week, from removal to refit.
Everything happens at your house. We set up a portable spray booth on site, so the doors and drawer fronts are sprayed flat in clean air without ever leaving your home. The boxes, face frames and visible edges are finished in place with the openings masked.
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Label and remove
Every door and drawer front is numbered against a map of your kitchen so each one returns to the opening it came from. Hinges and handles come off and are bagged by location. Nothing gets mixed up, and nothing gets refitted a few millimeters out.
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Degrease — properly
Kitchen cabinets carry years of cooking oil, especially above the range and around the handles. This is the step that gets skipped and it’s the step that causes failures, because no coating bonds to grease. Everything gets degreased before it gets sanded.
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Sand, fill, bond
Surfaces are sanded to a uniform key, chips and dings are filled, and a bonding primer suited to the substrate goes on — timber, MDF, thermofoil and previously-lacquered cabinets each want different treatment.
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Spray in controlled conditions
Fronts are sprayed flat and horizontal inside a portable booth we set up in your home, with a blower drawing the air through it — no dust, no draft and no family walking past. Your central air has to be off while we spray, or the return pulls overspray into the ductwork and carries it through the house. Multiple thin coats are built up with sanding between them.
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Boxes finished on site
While the fronts are curing, the face frames and visible box edges are masked and finished in your kitchen to match.
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Rehang and adjust
Fronts come back, go onto their original openings, and every hinge is adjusted so the doors sit level and the gaps are even. A kitchen with a beautiful finish and misaligned doors still looks wrong.
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Keeping it that way
Before we leave we tell you the one piece of maintenance that matters. Wipe the doors with a mild degreaser two or three times a year, paying attention to the spots you actually push rather than the ones that look dirty. Almost nobody closes a cabinet by the handle, and the skin oils that build up in that spot are the most common reason a good finish fails years later.
Refinish or replace
When refinishing is the right call — and when it isn’t.
We’d rather talk you out of a job than do one that won’t work. Refinishing is the right answer when the boxes are sound, the layout suits you, and it’s genuinely the finish you dislike.
It’s the wrong answer if the carcasses are water-damaged or swollen, if the doors are delaminating, or if what you actually want is a different layout, more storage or deeper drawers. No coating fixes a kitchen you have outgrown. In those cases we’ll say so.
Thermofoil and laminate fronts sit in between. They can be refinished with the right bonding system, but the preparation is more demanding and we’ll be straight with you about the expected life of the result.
There’s a choice of finish, and it’s worth understanding. Our standard is Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel — sprayed, it’s genuinely tough and it’s what most kitchens get. Above that we can spray Renner Aquaris, a waterborne two-component (2K) catalyzed polyurethane, which cures by chemical reaction rather than simply drying, and ends up harder and more resistant to knocks and cleaning.
It costs more, it has to be mixed and used inside a working window, and it is less forgiving to touch up years later — so it isn’t automatically the right answer. It earns its money on kitchens that get hammered: young families, hard-used drawer banks, cabinets by the range. We’ll price both at the walkthrough and tell you which one we’d pick for your kitchen.
Because the Renner is waterborne rather than solvent-based, we can spray a catalyzed finish in a booth set up inside an occupied house without filling it with solvent fumes. That, and the booth itself, is why very few refinishers offer it at all — more on Renner and 2K finishes.
Refinishing also lets you keep something that’s hard to buy now. Solid timber doors from the seventies and eighties are often better made than their modern replacements. Stripping and refinishing those is frequently the better result as well as the cheaper one.
What’s included
- Numbered removal of every door and drawer front
- Full degrease, sand and fill
- Bonding primer matched to your substrate
- Portable spray booth set up in your home
- Face frames and box edges finished in place
- Hardware refitted, hinges adjusted
- Interiors of doors finished as standard
- Daily clean-down, tools and materials cleared
Illustration — not a REDUX project
What refinishing actually changes.
The images below are generated to show the effect, not photographs of a job we did — we have not yet shot a before-and-after pair of a cabinet run. Everything except the cabinet finish and the handles is identical between the two, which is the honest part: refinishing changes the finish, not the kitchen.
Note what has not changed: the countertop, the backsplash, the sink and the floor are the same in both. Refinishing is not a new kitchen, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling one.
- Insured in Wisconsin
- 1-year written warranty on all work
- Free written estimates
- Locally owned in Glendale
Questions
Common questions
How disruptive is it, and for how long?
Reckon on about a week with the doors off. Nothing leaves your house — the fronts are sprayed in a booth we set up on site — but you will have open shelving and work going on in the room, and your central air has to be off while we are spraying. How much that gets in your way depends on the kitchen and the household, so we’ll walk you through the schedule at the estimate and you can plan around the days that matter.
What is the 2K upgrade, and do I need it?
Most kitchens don’t. Our standard is Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel, which sprayed properly is genuinely hard-wearing and is what the majority of jobs get. The step above it is Renner Aquaris, a waterborne two-component (2K) catalyzed polyurethane — it cures by chemical reaction rather than by drying, so the film ends up harder and stands up better to knocks and repeated cleaning. Being waterborne, it can be sprayed in a booth inside an occupied house without solvent fumes, which is a large part of why few refinishers offer it. The trade-offs are real: it costs more, and it’s fussier to touch up in a few years’ time. It’s worth it on a kitchen that takes a beating and usually isn’t on one that doesn’t. We’ll quote both and give you a straight recommendation.
What does it cost compared to new cabinets?
Cabinet painting starts at $2,500 for smaller kitchens, and generally lands at a small fraction of replacement — you’re paying for labor and coatings rather than new cabinetry, new countertops and installation. What takes a job above the starting figure is mostly door and drawer count, then how much preparation the existing finish needs. Full detail on what cabinet painting costs in Milwaukee, or get a fixed price from the free walkthrough.
Can you change the color completely?
Yes — dark timber to a light painted finish is one of the most common requests, and it transforms a room more than almost anything else. It takes an extra coat or two of primer to block the old tone from bleeding through, which we factor into the estimate.
Will it chip around the handles?
Not from anything we control. Chipping is usually a bonding failure, and bonding failures come from painting over grease or skipping the degloss, which is exactly why our process spends so long on degreasing and sanding before anything is sprayed. The one cause that isn’t about preparation is everyday hand oils: almost nobody closes a cabinet by the handle, so the oils off your skin build up in the spot you push and work into the finish over the years. Wiping the doors with a mild degreaser two or three times a year prevents it.
Do I have to keep the same hardware?
No. Refitting your existing handles is included; if you want new ones, this is the ideal moment. If new handles have a different hole spacing we can fill and re-drill, which is far easier while the fronts are off and being finished anyway.
Does the inside of the cabinets get done?
The inside faces of the doors are finished as standard. Finishing the full interior of the boxes is available and is priced separately, since it roughly doubles the surface area involved.
More on this from the journal
More services
Other work we take on
Interior Painting
Walls, ceilings, trim and doors. Full masking, proper cut lines, and floors that are covered before the first can is opened.
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Exterior Painting & Caulking
Wisconsin weather finds every gap. We wash, scrape, prime bare wood and re-caulk the joints that actually matter before we paint.
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Drywall Repair & Texture
Nail pops, settling cracks, water damage and old texture that needs matching. Repaired so the patch disappears once it is painted.
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Wood Staining & Trim
Furniture, built-ins, mantels, handrails and millwork — stained or painted, with a clear topcoat built up in thin sprayed passes.
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Where we work
Cabinet Painting & Refinishing across the North Shore
Curious what your kitchen would look like?
Send a few photos of your cabinets — a wide shot and a close-up of the worst-worn door. We’ll tell you honestly whether refinishing is the right move.
(414) 436-1464