Cabinet painting gets sold as a small job because the square footage is small. It is not a small job. The surfaces are slick by design, contaminated with cooking grease and hand oils, and used harder than any wall in the house. A finish that would be perfectly fine in a hallway will chip off a cabinet edge under normal use, and it will chip in exactly the spots you look at every single day.
So the work is front-loaded in a way wall painting never is. Doors and drawer fronts come off and get labeled, hardware comes off, everything gets degreased and then deglossed so a coating has something to grip, and the finish itself is chosen and applied for hardness and smoothness rather than for covering ground. Done properly it reads like a factory finish. Done like a wall job, it reads like a wall job that happened to your kitchen.
Fronts and hardware come off and get labeled, contents move out of the way, and the room gets masked and contained so dust and overspray stay inside the work zone instead of touring the house.
Everything gets degreased until it is genuinely clean, then deglossed or scuff sanded across every face, edge and profile. This is the step that decides whether the finish is still on there next year.
Bare wood, factory-finished panels and previously painted cabinets do not take the same primer. The right one blocks what needs blocking and gives the topcoat one consistent surface to sit on.
Thin, even coats, sanded between where it needs it, until the surface is smooth and uniform. Hardware and fronts go back on once the finish is hard enough to be handled.
Cabinet pricing tracks door and drawer count more closely than kitchen size, because every front is a separate piece to remove, clean, degloss, coat on both faces and rehang. Past the count, the drivers are surface condition and what the existing finish is, since a slick factory coating and a previously painted cabinet need different prep; whether cabinet interiors and shelving are included; how much detail lives in the door profile, because grooves and raised panels are slow; how many coats and whether the finish is sprayed or brushed; and how much of the room has to be masked and contained to work in it at all.
Because square footage is the wrong unit here. The labor is in the count of separate pieces and the prep each one needs: removal, labeling, degreasing, deglossing, coating both faces, controlled drying and reassembly. A bedroom is a handful of large flat planes. A kitchen is dozens of small parts, each handled several times, in a finish that has to survive daily contact.
Any finish can chip if it was applied over grease or gloss, which is the usual cause rather than bad luck. The things that decide durability are how thoroughly the surface was degreased and dulled, whether the right primer went down, whether the topcoat was built for contact, and whether it was allowed to harden before the doors went back to work.
It can be done, and it shows. Doors left hanging mean edges and back faces get awkward coverage, hinges get coated, and the finish has fewer chances to lay out flat. Removing fronts and hardware adds labor to the quote and it is the single biggest difference between a cabinet job that looks like a finish and one that looks like a touch-up.
Yes. Open-grained wood will telegraph its texture through a painted finish unless the grain is filled first, and detailed profiles collect coating in the corners if the applicator is not careful. Neither is a problem, but both change the prep plan and the hours, so they should be discussed before the quote is written rather than after.
Walls, ceilings, trim and doors, plus the patching and caulking that decides whether the finished room reads smooth or shows every old nail pop. Inside the house, sheen matters as much as color, because sheen is what you touch and wash.
Learn more →Your south and west walls are aging faster than the north and east ones, and Utah sun is the reason. Exterior work is washing, scraping, sanding, caulking and priming first, then color, inside the part of the year the weather allows.
Learn more →Washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, patching and priming. It is most of the labor in a good paint job, none of what you photograph afterward, and the first line quietly deleted when a bid needs to come in low.
Learn more →Decks, fences, railings, doors, beams and interior woodwork. Stains and clear finishes behave differently from paint, because some soak into the wood and some form a film on top, and those two fail in completely different ways.
Learn more →Get quotes that price the prep, not just the color.
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