Cabinet Painting Questions From Mississauga Homeowners

Across Ontario in 2026, cabinet painting a whole kitchen usually falls between $2,500 and $5,500. Compact kitchens and tower galleys open nearer $1,500, while large or two-colour jobs climb through $6,000 to $9,000 and past it. Per door, expect roughly $130 to $250. Those are market bands, not a price list; your own figure arrives in the written quote after the free visit.

Most of it. Across the trade, labour accounts for something like sixty to seventy-five percent of a cabinet painting quote, because the coating itself is a few hundred dollars and the degreasing, sanding, filling, masking, priming, spraying and reinstalling are days of work. That is also why a quote far below the market range usually means prep is being skipped.

Only on request, and priced separately. Coating interiors roughly doubles the area a cabinet painting job has to spray, so most owners take the frames, the visible edges and the backs of the doors and leave shelf faces alone. Closed, the difference is invisible. Open, it reads as intentional.

Considerably. Two kitchens booked together share one mobilization, one round of containment and one booth cycle, and the lower kitchen usually has fewer and smaller doors. Booked apart, each carries its own setup cost.

Fronts return once the film handles safely, generally seven to ten days after they leave. Waterborne alkyd enamel reaches normal-use hardness in about a week and full cure nearer thirty days. A two-component polyurethane is cured inside roughly a day. Care notes cover the gap in either case.

It does, mostly on timing. Waterborne coatings cure slower in a humid August, and lake air through the southern part of the city keeps humidity up longer than it stays up inland. We allow extra time between coats rather than forcing the schedule, which is one advantage of doors being finished in a climate-controlled booth.

It never closes entirely. Carcass work occupies two or three days indoors, and the fronts are away at the booth for something like seven to ten. Open boxes serve as shelving meanwhile, and the sink, the range and the fridge stay in service throughout.

Usually, and it is a common cabinet painting request. The existing coating gets assessed first: anything peeling comes off, the rest is degreased and sanded dull, and a bonding primer goes over it. Where a previous coat is soft or lifting across whole doors, stripping is the honest answer and it gets priced that way.

No. Melamine is resin paper bonded to particleboard, usually a plain slab front with an edge band. Thermofoil starts as vinyl film pressed with heat over shaped MDF, giving rounded profile edges and no visible seam. Both want a bonding primer, but thermofoil is the one that delaminates from heat, and once it lifts nothing paints it back down.

Not where prep and cure were respected. Chipping at pull height traces to coating laid over grease, a missing or mismatched primer, thick brushed film, or hard use before hardening finished. Thin sprayed passes of a waterborne alkyd enamel, or of a two-component polyurethane, over the primer that substrate wanted, will hold at those spots for years.

Yes, provided the surface is degreased and scuffed first and the primer is a genuine bonding product rather than an all-purpose one. Melamine and thermofoil are non-porous, so cabinet painting adhesion is mechanical rather than absorbed. Edges are the weak point and they get extra attention.

A long heating season pulls indoor humidity down, and a solid raised panel shrinks slightly inside its frame. The hairline that appears is wood movement, not a cabinet painting failure, and it closes again when lake-air humidity returns in summer. Fronts are finished on every face so the movement stays even.

Yes, and it is a standard two-tone request. More often the split runs uppers against lowers, or perimeter against island, though painting exposed gables to match the fronts while interiors stay pale is common enough. Each element is priced separately so the mix is easy to adjust.

Hinges, handles and any latches come off, go into bags labelled to their door, and are stored until reinstall. Hardware being reused is cleaned. Where new pulls have different centres, the old holes are filled during prep and new ones drilled on a jig after the finish hardens.

Regularly. Doors leave on the first day, so the disruptive part of the job goes with them, and the boxes are handled over a day or two with low-odour waterborne product. Access, timing and ventilation get agreed with whoever lives there before the start date.

That is why doors leave the suite. Spraying, sanding dust and most of the odour go with them, leaving a day or two of low-odour waterborne cabinet painting on the boxes. Elevator time, corridor protection and the service entrance get arranged with management before the start date.