Customer Reviews

Refacing Cabinets: Making an Old Kitchen New (Fine Homebuilding)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this to be a very clear explanation as well as a source reference for resurfacing cabinets yourself. Many photographs, charts, and diagrams accompany the text. The author convinced me that this is a home improvement project that I could tackle with a little help from my friends. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to update their 60's or 70's kitchen. I plan to give it a try this summer.

This is a really excellent guide to cabinet refacing. It covers the job from start to finish, and offers several options for different steps along the way, not just the author's preferred technique. It gives the pros and cons of different techniques and materials as well. I'm a pretty good woodworker/carpenter/builder, so I really wouldn't hesitate to take on a reface job after reading this book. I've already ordered his other two books.

This book delivers exactly what it promises. I have used the techniques and they DO work. I would recommend this approach for the extremely budget minded renovator. By the way, the veneer he uses can be found easily online.

I completed my refacing project in a few days after thoroughly
reading and following the instructions in this excellent book.
The MUT is an indispensable tool; I got mine at Rockler. This
book saved me a lot of money by doing the reface myself and not
paying someone to redo my kitchen. It's worth every penny!

I had never seen a refaced kitchen or even spoken to someone who had. This book detailed the aspects of kitchen refacing in such a way that I am confident I can do this job myself and do it well. The pictures and diagrams are abundant and pertinent to the text and are a great supplement to understanding each aspect of the job. The book is organized and the subjects are categorized in such a way that the book is a good tutorial but can also be used as a reference.

If you plan to reface your kitchen or just want to know what is involved with the job this book is an excellent resource.

I don't think I could have gotten the project done without this book. Organized in perfect order. Many, many techniques to make the job look great and save time making everything fit. I talked to some professional cabinet refacers and they weren't even aware some of the techniques used in this book that made the result look great.

However, one item that is missing is the technique for getting a clean cut between 2 pieces of veneer that touch each other. It's the same overlay technique that wallpaper hangers use. Other than that, this book has it all.

This book is very thorough, and reading it convinced me to skip refacing (I think I have the skills) and just buy new cabinets. There's much more work involved than I appreciated and the disruption to the kitchen doesn't look to be much less than simply replacing the cabinets and cupboards.

I purchased Herrick Kimball's "Refacing Cabinets" book since it was the "bible" on how to reface your kitchen cabinets. I was not disappointed! I followed Mr. Kimball's instructions and the results were fantastic. My first refacing project looks great with few errors. Some references to materials need to be updated since the book is 10 years old. I did find equivalent substitutes.

This is a reasonably thorough book and will probably be a good reference for upgrading face-frame cabinets. I expected it to cover non-face-frame (European frameless) cabinets, but there's not a word in the book about them. Since the cabinets I am considering refacing are the Euro-style frameless kind, I will have to do additional research to complete my project. For example, a lot of the Euro-style cabinets were made of melamine; are the stick-on veneers appropriate for covering melamine? The edges of frameless cabinets are only about 3/4"; can you apply these stick-on veneers to such narrow edges and not have them lift off after a year? I was also looking for ideas about how to handle the cabinet interiors; many of these melamine cabinets come in white or light colors; when you apply wood veneers and add a wood door, the contrast between the new wood edges, sides and doors would not be pleasing -- how do you go about updating the cabinet interiors to minimize this contrast? Bottom line -- this is a good reference for refacing cabinets, but just doesn't go far enough to talk about frameless cabinets and the challenges mentioned above.

I completely refaced my kitchen with the help from this book and it turned out fantastic. It covered all of the steps necessary to do the job. This was a much better source than the brief installation instructions provided by the manufacturer of the product that I ended up using. Before reading this book, I was leaning toward replacing my cabinets instead of refacing because I didn't like the idea that when you open the cabinet doors you can see the old facing on the face frame sides. But the author uses a technique to wrap the facing around the interior sides of the face frame which makes it look like solid wood rather than an applied veneer. It was quite a bit extra work to do it this way but the results were well worth it. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering doing a DIY cabinet reface.