Tempe Elite Cabinets provides professional cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting in Tempe, AZ for residential and commercial properties across the Salt River Valley. Cabinet refacing and refinishing runs $4,000 to $10,000 in a typical Tempe kitchen against $15,000 to $40,000 to tear out and replace, and in this town it's the right call more often than it isn't. Tempe was built out decades ago, which means a lot of these kitchens sit on plywood boxes from an era when boxes were built properly and only the doors look their age. That's the whole argument for this site, and we'd rather make it plainly.
Refacing means new doors and drawer fronts in whatever style and finish you want, new hinges and slides, and the exposed face frames and finished ends skinned so everything matches. Two skinning methods exist and they are not equal. Three-piece wood veneer over a properly sanded frame is the better job and reads like real wood because it is. Rigid thermofoil applied over a shaped substrate is cheaper and perfectly fine on a rental, with one caveat we'll get to.
Refinishing is a different animal from refacing, and confusing them is how people end up disappointed. Refinishing keeps your existing doors and changes their color.
On 1970s red oak, that means the grain is still there under the paint no matter what anyone promises, so if you want a smooth modern slab look, you need new doors, not a new coat.
Doors come to the shop, get degreased, sanded, sealed with a bonding primer and sprayed. On-site brush-and-roll work on cabinet doors is a false economy and we don't do it.
Around Victory Acres and the investor-owned streets near campus, this is nearly the whole job description. A landlord turning a house between tenants wants durable, defensible and out in a week, not a three-week demolition with a permit conversation attached. Refacing gets a kitchen photographed and listed in five to eight days without touching the plumbing, the tops or the drywall. New hardware on every door means the next tenant can't strip a hinge screw that's been retightened four times.
The finish spec here is not negotiable. Painted doors are sprayed in catalyzed conversion varnish, which cures hard and chemically rather than just drying.
A brushed enamel on the west-facing run of a Tempe kitchen, where afternoon sun comes through the slider onto the cabinet fronts from April to October, stays soft, prints from a hand, and shows a wear line at the pull inside two summers.
The other detail is thermofoil next to a range: the film's adhesive gives up under sustained heat, and the door beside a slide-in range is the first one to lift.
If you're going thermofoil, spend the extra on wood doors for the two cabinets flanking the cooking surface.
Now the part that costs us jobs. Do not reface if your boxes are particleboard and already swelling at the sink base, if the layout is genuinely bad, or if there's water damage under the dishwasher. Putting $8,000 of doors on a failing carcass is the worst money in this trade, and we'll say so at the estimate rather than after the deposit.
Timeline is five to eight working days on a normal kitchen, and you keep using it most of that time. Doors are templated and built first, so the disruptive part on site is a day of skinning and a day of hanging and adjusting, not two weeks of an empty room.
With 15+ years of experience, our insured team brings the right materials and equipment to every job — furniture-grade plywood boxes, solid maple dovetail drawers, Blum and Grass soft-close hardware, frameless European construction, full-overlay and inset doors, rigid thermofoil and veneer refacing — and backs the work with a written workmanship warranty. We serve Tempe and nearby communities including Scottsdale, Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria.
What We Handle
Everything our cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting in Tempe covers
One crew, one point of contact, and the full range of cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting work in Tempe, AZ. If it is on this list we do it in house rather than handing it to a subcontractor:
- cabinet refacing refinishing
- cabinet refacing cost
- kitchen cabinet painting
- cabinet door replacement
- veneer refacing kitchen cabinets
- rigid thermofoil doors
- refinishing oak cabinets
- spray painted cabinets
- reface vs replace cabinets
- cabinet resurfacing
- update old kitchen cabinets
Not sure which one describes your situation? Describe it in plain words and we will sort it out — or browse the rest of our Tempe services.
Materials, equipment and how we do cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting
The difference between cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting that lasts and cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting that gets redone in three years is almost always preparation and materials, not the finish you see on day one. We work with furniture-grade plywood boxes, solid maple dovetail drawers, Blum and Grass soft-close hardware, frameless European construction, spec them to the job instead of to the invoice, and write the material grades into the free estimate so you know exactly what you are buying.
Every Tempe job runs the same way: site walk and measurements, written scope and fixed price, protection of the surrounding area, then the work itself with a daily clean-up. 15+ years of cabinet work in the Salt River Valley means we have already met whatever your property is going to throw at us — awkward access, older construction, an HOA with opinions.
Where we do cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting outside Tempe
Tempe Elite Cabinets covers Tempe and the surrounding communities of the Salt River Valley. Crews run out to the same nearby cities every week, so an out-of-town job does not mean an out-of-town price.
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Scottsdale, AZ — Maricopa County, population 241,361
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Phoenix, AZ — Maricopa County, population 1,608,139
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Glendale, AZ — Maricopa County, population 248,325
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Peoria, AZ — Maricopa County, population 190,985
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Surprise, AZ — Maricopa County, population 143,148
- Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting in Goodyear, AZ — Maricopa County, population 95,294
Start on the Tempe Elite Cabinets homepage for a free estimate, or call (855) 416-1185 and describe the job.
Why Tempe Chooses Tempe Elite Cabinets
- ✓Over 15 years refacing and building cabinetry across the Salt River Valley
- ✓Refacing quoted honestly when the boxes are sound, not upsold to a teardown
- ✓Frameless European construction to recover interior width in small kitchens
- ✓Soffit removal so uppers run to the ceiling in Tempe's older ranch houses
The standards behind cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting
Quality here is not a matter of opinion — it is written down. The cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting work we do in Tempe follows published industry standards: KCMA runs the ANSI/KCMA A161.1 cabinet performance certification, and National Kitchen & Bath Association publishes the kitchen planning guidelines. If a contractor cannot tell you which standard a detail comes from, that is worth asking about before you sign.
Every cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting project in Tempe gets the same attention, whether it is a single room or a full commercial job. We show up on schedule, keep the site clean, and stand behind the work — the estimate is free and there is no pressure.
Ready to get started? Call (855) 416-1185 for a free cabinet refacing, refinishing & painting free estimate in Tempe, or request a quote and we'll get right back to you.