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1. Refacing kitchen cabinets

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Refinishing your kitchen cabinets and drawers

Refacing kitchen cabinets yourself will save you a considerable amount of money and can be very satisfying. Be warned, however. It is not a project for the faint-hearted. As with any major project, it takes sure-footed planning, the right tools and a moderately skilled handyman or handywoman.

Measuring up your kitchen cabinets.

Before ordering your kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts, you need to know their measurements with some precision. Take time and take care to do it properly. You'll save a lot of heartache if you get it right the first time.

In most cases, you can order your new kitchen cabinet doors using the measurements of the old doors. If not, you will need to measure the cabinet openings the doors and drawer fronts need to cover.

Bear in mind that if your cabinets are over twenty years old, there is a good chance they were custom made. That means that every cabinet will be a different size and will require individual measurement. Even if your kitchen cabinets were manufactured more recently, taking the time to measure each cabinet individually will help ensure there are no nasty surprises at a later stage. (And believe me, there are nasty surprises!)

I recommend you number each cabinet and drawer. That way you will know which measurement corresponds to which cabinet or drawer. Personally, I tend to scribble the measurements of each cabinet on an unseen inside surface and number them with a pencil. (I can wipe it off later if necessary). In any event, keep all details well documented. When your doors are finally delivered, you'll be off to a bad start if you have to measure every cabinet again to work out which door goes with which kitchen unit.

The trick is to measure the openings the doors are intended to cover, and add an inch to the height and the width. This will result in a ½ inch overlay around each door.

Where you have double doors on a cabinet, measure the entire opening the two doors will have to cover. Add a 3/4 inch to the total width and divide by two in order to calculate the width of each door. (With double cabinet doors, we take off 1/8 inch for each door to adjust the center gap between the doors. You might be comfortable with a 1/16, but that will depend on the precision of the door manufacture).

The process for measuring up kitchen drawer fronts is exactly the same. Measure the drawer opening, width and height, and add an inch to allow a ½ inch overlay around each edge of the cabinet drawer.

Finally, when noting down the measurements of the doors and drawer fronts, traditionally the width goes first. So: "width x height".

Next, learn how to choose and order your new kitchen cabinet doors and drawers.

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