The short answer
Reface when your cabinet boxes are solid, square, and not water-damaged, and when the layout already works. Replace when the boxes are falling apart, swollen with moisture, or the layout fights you. Refacing a typical Bellingham kitchen runs about $7,000 to $16,000; replacing with new custom cabinets runs $20,000 to $45,000. The decision is mostly about the condition of your boxes and whether you want to change the layout.
What refacing actually is
Refacing keeps your existing cabinet boxes and replaces the parts you see: new doors, new drawer fronts, and a matching veneer over the box faces, plus new hinges and pulls. The result looks like a new kitchen, but the structure behind your countertops stays put. It is faster, cheaper, and far less disruptive than a full tear-out, usually 3 to 5 days instead of weeks.
The five-minute box check
Before you decide, open a few doors and look at the boxes themselves. Here is what we check on a Bellingham kitchen:
- The sink base. This is the first box to fail in our climate. Open it and feel the bottom and back for soft, swollen, or delaminating material. A wrecked sink base is the most common reason we recommend replacing.
- Box material. Solid plywood boxes reface well. Particleboard boxes that are swelling at the toe-kick or crumbling at the screw holes do not.
- Square and solid. Press on the boxes. If they flex, rack, or the joints have opened up, the structure is going.
- The layout. If you would change where the cabinets are, refacing locks in the current layout. That alone can push you toward replacing.
- Water history. A past leak under the sink or dishwasher often means hidden damage in the surrounding boxes.
When refacing wins
Refacing is the smart spend when the boxes pass the check and you mostly want a fresh look. You get new doors, a new finish, and new hardware for well under the cost of new cabinets, and you keep your kitchen usable for most of the project. For a lot of Bellingham kitchens, especially solid older homes where the boxes were built well, refacing is the right-sized project.
When replacing wins
Replace when the boxes are water-damaged or structurally tired, or when you want to change the layout, move the sink, add an island, or open up a wall. In older Bellingham homes, replacing also lets us spec moisture-resistant plywood boxes built for our humidity, which a 1960s particleboard kitchen never had. If you are going to fight the existing layout forever, the money is better spent on new cabinets that fix it.
The honest middle ground
Sometimes the answer is partial: reface the runs that are solid, replace the sink base or a damaged section, and add new counters across the whole thing. We open the boxes, check them with you, and tell you straight which path fits, rather than selling you the bigger job by default.