Cabinet painting in Lynn, MA is the cheapest way to change a kitchen, and Custom Cabinets Lynn does it with the doors off and sprayed flat. Painting your kitchen runs $2,000 to $6,500, or $100 to $250 a door and drawer front. Spraying runs $40 to $100 per linear foot, against $30 to $70 for brush and roll. You'll be able to tell the difference from across the room: surfaces without brush marks. Every figure sits on our cabinet price guide.
The one failure that accounts for most unhappy painted kitchens has nothing to do with the paint you chose. Sanding cannot remove the accumulated thin film of cooking grease on kitchen doors. Paint laid over it sticks to the grease instead of to the wood.
You see the result at the handles and along the top edge of the doors, usually within a season, and it looks exactly like bad paint. It's a job that skipped 15 minutes of degreasing per run and a bonding primer.
The 2nd failure is time. Your finish is dry to the touch long before it is hard. A kitchen loaded back up on day two takes fingernail marks and stacking marks that never come out. We keep your doors off the boxes until the paint is dry and hardened.
Which route suits your kitchen
Doors off, sprayed, boxes painted in the room
We take your doors and drawer fronts off and spray them flat in a clean space, then prime and paint the boxes and frames in the room. That split costs $2,000 to $6,500. It is also why your doors come back without a single brush line in them. Your kitchen stays usable for most of it, since the boxes keep working while the doors are away.
One run, an island, or the base cabinets only
We price painting per door and front at $100 to $250, which gives you a way to do half a kitchen well instead of all of it badly. Islands are the common version here, because a painted island under stained wall cabinets reads as a decision. We'd rather price you a partial job than talk you into a whole kitchen you didn't want or envision.
Painting oak, where the grain is the whole question
Oak has open pores that show straight through paint, so a white oak kitchen ends up with visible grain unless we fill the grain first. Some people want that texture and some are surprised by it. We show you a finished sample first to make sure this is what you want for your kitchen. Filling adds prep hours and puts your job in the 20-45% heavy prep band, not the base price.
Painting laminate and thermofoil fronts
Laminate and thermofoil take paint, but only over a bonding primer made for a slick surface, and only where the film hasn't already lifted off its core. A door that has started to peel beside your range or above your dishwasher will keep peeling under a coat of paint. We cover that case at peeling thermofoil and laminate doors, because the fix there is usually a new front rather than paint.
How your week runs
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We degrease before we touch anything else
We wash every door, front, frame and box face with a degreaser, then rinse. That step is the whole difference between a finish that holds for a decade and one that lets go at the handles by spring.
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We label your doors and take the hardware off
We number each door to its opening and bag the hinges and plates with it, since a run of look-alike doors will not go back the way it came off. We swap your worn hinges at $30 to $80 a door while everything is apart. Blum parts come in a couple of days.
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We sand, fill and prime with a bonding primer
We scuff sand, fill the dents, and prime with a product made to grip. In an old kitchen we sand wet or strip with chemicals instead of dry sanding, because your kitchen falls under the lead-safe rules from the first six square feet.
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We spray your doors flat and cut in your boxes
Your doors get sprayed lying down so the paint levels itself, and the boxes and frames get a fine brush and a foam roller in the room. We use Benjamin Moore ADVANCE where the schedule allows a 16h wait between coats. Where you need the kitchen back on Friday, we use Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel, since that one recoats in 4h.
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We keep your doors off until the finish is hard
We hold your doors off the boxes for the maker's hardening window, because both of those paints take about 30 days to reach full hardness. You get your kitchen back in stages and a written note of when to load the shelves, which is usually 3-5 days after the last coat.
What decides whether a painted kitchen still looks right in year five
A 1946 kitchen is lead-safe work from the first six square feet
The city's assessing roll lists nine in ten of Lynn's houses as built before 1978, the year the federal ban on lead in house paint took effect. What is on your original doors may contain it. Once more than 6 square feet of it gets disturbed, the state's lead-safe rules kick in. Sanding one wall of original cabinets gets there inside ten minutes. We seal the room, work wet and clean down with a HEPA vacuum, at $350 to $1,200. That belongs on your quote where you can see it.
Recoat time and cure time are different numbers
Benjamin Moore ADVANCE (a durable, water-based paint that dries to a smooth, oil-like finish) takes a second coat at 16h and reaches full hardness at about 30 days. Sherwin-Williams Emerald (a top-tier line of paint) recoats at 4h and hardens over the same 30 days, which is why it wins on a tight schedule and not on toughness. At 48 hours the paint is touch-dry, and it's still weeks from being 100% hard.
Some kitchens cost more to prepare than to paint
Peeling finish, water swelling, brittle old varnish and a previous coat that was never degreased all add 20% to 45% to the base price. The hours go into stripping and filling before any color goes on. If most of your kitchen looks like that, stripping back to bare wood at $1,500 to $5,000 usually beats painting over it.
Why Lynn homeowners call us to paint
We don't cut the corners that make painted cabinets peel. The grease comes off every door before a drop of primer goes on, the doors get sprayed flat away from the house, and they stay off until the paint is hard, not just dry. The whole kitchen costs $2,000 to $6,500, and you get a written date for when the shelves can carry weight.
What each part of the job costs
| Painting a standard kitchen, doors off and sprayed | $2,000 to $6,500 |
|---|---|
| Painting priced by the foot | $30 to $70 per linear foot |
| Sprayed finish priced by the foot | $40 to $100 per linear foot |
| Per door and drawer front | $100 to $250 |
| Heavy prep surcharge | 20% to 45% added |
| Waterborne alkyd recoat and full cure | 16 hours and 30 days |
Painting a Lynn kitchen runs $2,000 to $6,500 sprayed, or $100 to $250 per door and drawer front. Stripping and refinishing back to wood runs $1,500 to $5,000. Most of the price is prep.
| What the job is | Typical range | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Painting a standard kitchen, doors off and sprayedDoors and fronts come off, get degreased, scuffed, primed and sprayed, and go back on adjusted. The boxes are cut in on site. This is the whole job for a kitchen whose boxes and layout are fine. | $2,000 – $6,500 | installed |
| Cabinet painting priced by the footMeasure the run of base and wall cabinets along the wall. On a painting job we price the doors and fronts first, because they make up most of the price. | $30 – $70 | per linear foot |
| Sprayed finish, priced by the footSpraying costs 30% to 70% more per foot than brush and roll, and it is the difference between a finish with no brush marks and one with them. On a door you touch six times a day, that gap shows. | $40 – $100 | per linear foot |
| Painting priced per door and drawer frontUseful on a partial job, an island only, or a kitchen where half the doors were already replaced. Counts fronts the same as doors because the prep is the same. | $100 – $250 | per door or front |
| Stripping and refinishing back to wood, standard kitchenWhere the wood is worth keeping and the finish is not. Strip, sand, stain if the color is changing, then a new topcoat. Different job from painting and a different result. | $1,500 – $5,000 | installed |
| Restaining, priced by areaMeasured across the visible door and front surface rather than the run. The spread is wide because oak takes a color change badly and maple takes it evenly, and one of those needs a toner coat. | $4 – $15 | per square foot |
| Published Lynn comparable, cabinet refinishingA live price published by a contractor on its own Lynn page. Carried here because it is the only local figure in this whole table, and it sits above the national range at both ends. | $2,800 – $5,800 | installed |
| Heavy prep surcharge, cabinets in poor conditionPeeling finish, water swelling, old varnish that has gone brittle, or a previous paint job that was never degreased. All of that is stripping time, and it is added rather than absorbed. | 20% – 45% | added to the job |
| Catalyzed conversion varnish or pigmented lacquer, sprayed off siteThe shop finish rather than the brushable one. Doors go out, get sprayed in a booth and come back, which is why it costs more and why it holds up under a coffee pot. | $1,200 – $3,600 | added to the job |
| Lead-safe containment and cleanup on a pre-1978 kitchenSealing the room, no dry sanding, HEPA vacuum and a wet cleanup. On a kitchen built before 1978 this governs the method, so it is either on the quote or it is being skipped. | $350 – $1,200 | per job |
Before and after
Want yours measured properly?
We come out, measure the opening at three heights and check how far off square your walls sit, then put a written number on it before anything is ordered.
Questions we get asked
How much does it cost to paint kitchen cabinets in Lynn?
$2,000 to $6,500 for a standard kitchen with the doors off and sprayed, which works out at $100 to $250 per door and drawer front. Your kitchen carries a 20% to 45% prep surcharge on top if it's in poor shape.
How long does painting a kitchen take?
4-7 working days on site, and about 30 days to full hardness. Your doors stay off between coats, which is 16h on Benjamin Moore ADVANCE and 4h on Sherwin-Williams Emerald. Nothing goes back on a shelf for 3 to 5 days.
Why do painted cabinets peel at the handles?
Because the doors were not degreased. Cooking film sits on your doors, sanding polishes it instead of removing it, and the paint sticks to the film. You see it at the handles first and the top edges, and no paint brand can prevent it.
Do I have to sand my cabinets before painting?
Something has to rough up the surface, but on an older kitchen we don't dry-sand it. Past 6 square feet of disturbed paint the work falls under the lead-safe rules, so we wet-sand or strip with chemicals and clean down with a HEPA vacuum, at $350 to $1,200.
Is painting cheaper than refacing my cabinets?
By a lot. Painting runs $2,000 to $6,500 against $5,000 to $13,000 to reface and $10,000 to $26,500 for new custom boxes. Painting keeps your existing doors, so it's the right answer when the door style still suits you and the color doesn't.
Who paints kitchen cabinets near me in Lynn?
Custom Cabinets Lynn paints kitchens across Lynn and the North Shore for $2,000 to $6,500. We take the doors off and spray them instead of brushing them on the hinges, and we degrease the whole kitchen before a bonding primer goes anywhere near it.
If the color of your boxes and doors is dated, painting is the best-value job in this trade. At $2,000 to $6,500 it costs a quarter or less of what a fully custom kitchen does. Even a budget line such as Fabuwood lands at $3,000 to $11,000 for a 10x10 before anyone touches your walls.
If you want a shop finish instead of a site one, cabinet spray finishing puts your doors through a booth. When the wood underneath is worth showing, cabinet refinishing strips instead of covers, and everything we handle lists the rest.
