The two questions, in order
Question one: are the carcasses sound? This is physical and you can answer it yourself in five minutes. If the answer is no, only replacement is honest and the rest of this page is background reading.
Question two: what do you actually dislike? If the boxes are sound, the right service depends entirely on what is bothering you, and the four candidate answers point in four different directions.
What each job actually does
| Painting | Refinishing | Refacing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doors kept? | Yes | Yes | No, new doors | No |
| Carcasses kept? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Grain stays visible? | No, opaque | Yes | Depends on new door | Depends on new door |
| Door profile can change? | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Layout can change? | No | No | No | Yes |
| Doors to drawers? | No | No | No | Yes |
| Needs real wood surface? | No | Yes | No | n/a |
| Published San Clemente figure | $1,035 to $5,758 typical | Between painting and refacing | $1,577 to $2,482 laminate, twelve cabinets | $500 to $1,200 per linear foot, California |
Refinishing has no separately published San Clemente figure of its own in the sources used here; it sits between painting and refacing for most kitchens because stripping is slow but materials are modest.
Question two, answered by what is bothering you
| What you dislike | The service | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The colour, and only the colour | Painting | Cheapest route to a different looking kitchen |
| A cloudy, chalky or ambered clear finish over good timber | Refinishing | The only option that keeps the wood visible |
| The door profile itself | Refacing | The only option below replacement that changes the door |
| Wanting drawers where there are doors | Replacing | A carcass change, not a surface change |
| A wide filler strip or a dead corner | Replacing | A layout fault; new surfaces reproduce it exactly |
| An appliance opening that is the wrong size | Replacing | Openings are carcass dimensions |
| The hardware | Hardware only | The cheapest meaningful change there is |
The last row is worth taking seriously. New pulls and soft-close retrofits on an otherwise sound kitchen cost a fraction of anything else here and change how a kitchen feels to use.
The published numbers, side by side
All of these come from named sources and are labelled by the geography they describe.
| Route | Figure | Source geography |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware only | $2 to $4 per piece budget, $20 to $50 premium | San Clemente cost source |
| Painting | $1,035 to $5,758 typical, average around $1,000 | San Clemente cost source |
| Refacing, laminate | $1,577 to $2,482 on twelve cabinets, $131 to $207 each | San Clemente cost source |
| Refacing, wood veneer | About $2,000 to $6,000 | San Clemente cost source |
| Replacing, custom | $500 to $1,200 per linear foot installed | California published guide |
| Replacing, semi-custom | $150 to $900 per linear foot installed | National, updated July 2026 |
| Installation labour alone | $50 to $70 per linear foot | National, updated July 2026 |
| Removing existing cabinets | About $300 | National, updated July 2026 |
The San Clemente figures are modelled from labour-hour build-ups rather than collected quotes, and the source says so. The California and national figures are published per-foot bands. None of them is a quote.
Worked on a real kitchen: twenty linear feet with twenty cabinets. Painting lands somewhere in the published $1,035 to $5,758 band depending on door count and preparation. Refacing at the published per cabinet rate is roughly $2,620 to $4,140 in laminate. Replacing at $600 a foot is about $12,000 in cabinetry before installation, removal, finished ends and hardware, which add several thousand more. The spread between the cheapest and the most expensive route on the same room is close to tenfold.
San Clemente refacing cost page→, San Clemente painting cost page→ and national installed figures updated July 2026→
How long cabinets last, and why the tables disagree
Four organisations publish service life figures for kitchen cabinets, and the range between them runs from 15 years to 50. That looks like noise and is actually the most useful information in this guide.
| Source | Figure | Purpose of the figure |
|---|---|---|
| NAHB and Bank of America Home Equity, February 2007 | 50 years | What manufacturers say a cabinet can do |
| InterNACHI Standard Estimated Life Expectancy Chart | 50 years | Home inspection reference |
| Fannie Mae Estimated Useful Life Tables, Form 4099.F, August 2019 | 20 years wood, 15 particle board | Multifamily capital planning |
| Georgia DCA Office of Affordable Housing, 2011 | 15 to 25 years | Affordable housing capital planning, action = replace |
The NAHB study is candid about its own limits, noting that "the life expectancy of housing components is greatly affected by the quality of maintenance" and that "changing consumer preferences can result in products being replaced long before, or after, the end of their practical life expectancy." Its figures are explicitly "based on first-owner use."
The manufacturer figures describe capability. The lender figures describe what actually happens in portfolios somebody is budgeting to maintain. For this decision, use them as a sanity check: a kitchen inside the 15 to 25 year lender range is a reasonable candidate for surface work, while one at 35 or 40 years deserves a hard look at the carcasses before anybody spends money on doors.
The one figure that speaks directly to specification is Fannie Mae’s split between wood construction at 20 years and particle board at 15. If you are replacing, that five year gap is the argument for plywood at the sink base, and it is covered in the box materials guide.
All four tables in one document→
The same source's replacement figures, which is the honest comparison
The San Clemente refacing cost page also publishes what replacement costs, and comparing the two on one page from one source removes the usual apples-and-oranges problem. Read against its own $1,577 to $2,482 laminate refacing band for twelve cabinets, its replacement figures are three to thirteen times higher.
| Route | Published figure | Multiple of its laminate refacing low end |
|---|---|---|
| Refacing, laminate, twelve cabinets | $1,577 to $2,482 | 1x to 1.6x |
| Refacing, wood veneer | $2,000 to $6,000 | 1.3x to 3.8x |
| Refacing, larger projects | Can spike to $7,000 to $10,000 | 4.4x to 6.3x |
| Replacing with new cabinets | $3,000 to $6,000 | 1.9x to 3.8x |
| Replacing with stock cabinets | $8,000 to $11,000 | 5.1x to 7.0x |
| Replacing with custom-made cabinets | $15,000 to $20,000 | 9.5x to 12.7x |
All six bands are from the same San Clemente cost page, which states its own figures are built from local labour-hour models. The multiples are arithmetic on those bands. Note that its refacing high end overlaps its lowest replacement band, which is the real decision point.
The overlap in that table is the finding worth taking away. A large veneer refacing job at $6,000 and a basic replacement at $6,000 cost the same, and only one of them lets you change the layout. Where a job is big enough to reach the top of the refacing band, the comparison stops being refacing versus replacement on price and becomes a question about whether the existing layout is worth keeping. That is exactly the first of the two questions at the top of this page, arriving again from the cost side.
It also explains the pattern of regret people describe. Nobody regrets a $1,600 refacing on a sound kitchen, and a fair number of people regret a $6,000 refacing on a layout they already disliked, because the money went into preserving the thing that was bothering them. Spend the top of the refacing band only where the layout is genuinely right.
The middle option nobody offers
If the sink base has failed and everything else is sound, the obvious answer is not replacement and it is not refacing. It is rebuild the failed carcass and reface the rest.
That is entirely possible, it is frequently the best value on this page, and almost nobody offers it unprompted. The reasons are structural rather than sinister: refacing companies do not build carcasses and cabinet shops do not usually quote refacing, so the job falls between two categories. If your kitchen fits that description, ask for it by name and be prepared for a short pause on the other end of the conversation.
What none of these changes
All four routes leave some things alone, and knowing which saves disappointment.
- Painting, refinishing and refacing all keep the layout, so a filler strip stays a filler strip
- Painting and refinishing both keep the door profile, so a dated raised panel stays a raised panel
- Refacing keeps the carcass interiors, so an awkward fixed shelf stays where it is
- None of the surface routes converts a door cabinet into a drawer bank without rebuilding the box
- None of them changes an appliance opening, because openings are carcass dimensions
- Only replacement addresses a dead corner, because a corner is a design decision made in the boxes
Paperwork, briefly, because it is simpler than people expect
None of these four routes needs a building permit in San Clemente. The City’s own amended exempt-work ordinance, San Clemente Municipal Code 17.04.032, lists “Painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, counter tops and similar finish work” as exempt.
What generates paperwork is the services work around a layout change: moving a sink, adding circuits, fitting a new range hood. The same ordinance requires separate plumbing, electrical and mechanical permits for work attached to exempt items. So a straight replacement in the same footprint is as paperwork-free as refacing, and a replacement that opens up the room is not. Two further items apply to all four: a written signed contract over $500 with the deposit capped at $1,000 or ten percent, and, in pre-1978 houses where painted surfaces are disturbed beyond six square feet per room, the federal lead RRP rule. Both are in the permit and licensing guide.
Which route suits which San Clemente house
The city’s housing eras map onto this decision unusually cleanly.
| Housing | Usual condition | Usual answer |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-war, Southwest San Clemente and North Beach | Built in place, non-standard, long settled | Replacement, because refacing needs standard doors and square frames |
| 1950s to 1970s tract | One 1990s remodel, now thirty years old, sink base suspect | Check the boxes; often replacement, sometimes refacing plus a rebuilt sink base |
| 1980s and 1990s hillside | Sound boxes, working layout, dated raised panel | Refacing or refinishing, and being told so is the good outcome |
| 2000s Talega and Marblehead Coastal | Nothing has failed | Neither; additions and drawer conversions instead |
This is a tendency rather than a rule, and it is still settled by the physical test rather than by the year the house was built.
The three services in detail are refacing, refinishing and painting, with replacement on the custom cabinets page. The numbers behind all of them are in the San Clemente cost guide.