Can you replace just the cabinet doors?
Yes. A cabinetmaker can build new doors and drawer fronts to fit the boxes you have, and on a sound kitchen that is often the right call. The catch is the face frame that shows between the doors, which keeps its old finish and its old hinge marks. The fuller job that deals with that frame is kitchen cabinet refacing in Owensboro.
A door swap suits a particular kitchen. The boxes are solid, the layout works, and the frame is in good enough shape, or hidden enough by the new doors, that nobody will notice it kept its age. That describes a fair number of houses here. The 1990s honey-oak kitchens in the newer subdivisions usually have frames in decent condition under doors that are the wrong color and the wrong arch. The older brick-ranch kitchens, with site-built oak or birch boxes from the 1960s and 70s, can go either way, and the next few questions are how you tell.
What do the old doors and hinges tell you before you order?
The hinge is the first clue, because it tells you how the old door met the frame. Open a door and look at where the hinge is screwed. If one leaf sits on the front face of the frame where you can see it with the door closed, the new doors will be hung a different way and the old screw holes will need an answer. If nothing shows from the front, the kitchen already uses a hidden hinge and the swap is easier.
Then look at the door edge. A lot of older site-built kitchens have lipped doors, with a rabbet cut around the back so part of the door drops into the opening while a routed lip rests over the frame. Close one and run a finger around the edge. If the door sits partly inside the opening instead of flat on the frame, it is lipped, and it hangs on an offset hinge made for that shape. New doors will not be lipped. They sit flat on the frame face, on concealed hinges, and that changes how much frame shows and what happens to the old holes.
Some flat slab doors from the 1960s show no hinge from the front at all. Those may hang on pivot pins set into the top and bottom edges, which leave small marks inside the frame opening that new overlay doors mostly cover. It is worth taking a clear photo of one hinge and one door edge before anyone comes to measure. That photo answers half the questions on the first visit.
How much of the old face frame will show around the new doors?
Less than you see now, in most cases. New doors on a door swap are overlay doors, which sit on top of the frame and cover part of it. How much frame stays visible between two doors is called the reveal, and the cabinetmaker picks the overlay to control it. More overlay hides more of the old frame and more of its wear.
The limit is the frame itself. Where two doors meet over a cabinet with no center stile, they can close almost edge to edge. Where a pair of doors shares a narrow center stile, there is only so much wood for both doors to land on, so a strip of old frame will show down the middle whatever you order. Look at the sink base in particular, because that pair is the one everybody sees.
And some of the frame never had a door on it at all. The exposed end of a run, the side panel of the cabinet next to the refrigerator, the strip above the range hood, the filler beside a wall. All of that stays exactly as it is in a door swap. On a 1990s honey-oak kitchen that can be a lot of oak. How overlay choice moves the price, and why an inset door is a different job, is on the cost page under overlay or inset.
What happens to the old hinge holes?
The new doors get concealed hinges, with a round cup bored into the back of each door and a plate or clip fixed to the inside edge of the frame. Nothing screws into the front face anymore. So any hinge that used to sit on the frame face leaves screw holes, and around them there is often a patch of wood that looks different from the rest.
You will find that patch on almost every older oak kitchen. Fifty years of kitchen light ambers oak, but not under a hinge leaf. Pull the old hinge and there is a pale rectangle with two or three screw holes in it, sharp-edged, and usually a grease ring around the one nearest the range. If the new door’s overlay lands over that spot, it disappears behind the door when it is closed and shows only when the door is open. If the overlay stops short of it, the pale rectangle is in plain sight.
Where the marks will show, the holes get filled and the frame gets finished around them. Filling holes is easy. Getting a filled, re-stained patch on a fifty-year-old frame to match the wood beside it is the hard part, which is one reason a lot of swaps end up with the frames painted or covered. The refacing page walks through the hinges, slides and hardware step on a full job. On a door swap, the question worth asking at the measure is which hinge marks the new overlay will hide and which ones it leaves.
Do the drawer fronts have to change, and what is behind them?
They do, or the kitchen ends up with new doors next to old drawers. How hard that is depends on how the drawer was built. A drawer with a separate front screwed to the box takes a new front in minutes. A drawer whose front is part of the box needs the front cut back and covered, or a new drawer box behind it.
On most newer drawers the front is screwed on from inside the box. The old front comes off with a screwdriver, a new front goes on in its place, and the drawer box keeps working. Many older site-built drawers were made the other way, with the front joined into the sides and sometimes lipped to match the old doors. There is nothing to unscrew, so the shop decides at the measure which of the two fixes the drawer can take.
A new drawer box is where a door swap starts to grow. It is usually the right move on a kitchen whose drawers run on worn wood rails, and it is a line on the estimate rather than a surprise, as long as someone pulls a drawer all the way out at the measure. Pull one yourself before that visit. If the front and the sides are one piece of joinery, say so on the phone.
What do you do with a frame that no longer matches the new doors?
Leave it, finish it on site, or cover it with veneer. Which one depends on how much frame shows once the new doors are hung and how far its color sits from theirs. Each step up costs more and moves the job closer to a full reface, and the last one is a reface.
Leave it. With a generous overlay and a frame that is in fair shape, new painted doors on an old stained frame can look intentional, the way two-tone kitchens do. This works best when the new doors are a color and the frame is a wood, and worst when both are wood and the woods disagree. The Ohio Valley cabinet wood guide covers which species the new doors could be.
Finish it on site. The frame gets cleaned, deglossed or sanded, and sprayed to match the new doors under masking. That is the frame half of the strip and spray the refacing page describes, done on the frames only.
Veneer it. New wood veneer over every frame face and exposed end, matched to the new doors. At that point the job is no longer a door swap. It is a reface, with the steps on the refacing page, and it should be estimated as one.
The dividing line is how much frame shows once the new doors are on. If you can see it only when a door is open, leave it or touch it up. If you see it from across the room, the kitchen wants finished or veneered frames.
What does replacing only the cabinet doors cost in Owensboro?
An unfinished shaker door from a local shop runs $45 - $140 each, depending on species and size. That is the door before the finish, before hinges, and before anybody hangs it, which is why a written estimate prices the whole kitchen and not the door. Drawer fronts, any new drawer boxes, the hinge boring and the frame work all land on the same estimate.
The ceiling to compare against is a full reface, which runs $4,500 - $11,000 for a typical Owensboro kitchen and includes veneered frames and ends. A door swap sits under that. How far under depends on the door count and on what the frame needs. The cost page shows what refacing and new doors cost next to new cabinets.
When does a door swap stop making sense?
When the parts that stay are the problem. New doors change how a kitchen looks, and they hang on the frame and box that are already there. If the frame is damaged or the boxes have taken water, the new doors inherit that on the day they go up.
- The face frame is split, water-stained along the bottom rail, or pulled loose from the box. New doors hung on a loose frame will sag with it.
- The frame is out of square. Lay a straightedge across a run and check whether the old doors already sit crooked in their openings. Concealed hinges adjust a little, but they cannot make a racked opening look straight.
- The layout wants drawers where doors are, or a wider base than the frame allows. A door swap keeps every opening the size it is now.
- The boxes fail the putty-knife test on the refacing page. New doors on swollen particleboard come off again when the boxes get replaced.
Any of those points the kitchen toward refacing with frame repair, or toward new custom kitchen cabinets built to the room. If none of them apply, price the door swap against the reface figure above, with the overlay and the drawer fronts settled at the measure.