Two to three days on site, and about two to three weeks from the measure. Your doors and drawer fronts are made to order on a 1 to 2 week lead, and only the fitting takes your kitchen out of service.
The number that matters to you is not the calendar total, so Custom Cabinets Lynn quotes both: the weeks before anything happens, and the days your kitchen is actually disrupted. Only the second one costs you anything to live through.
Week one is the measure. We take every opening, every door and every drawer front, check how far your run has drifted out of level, and put the order in. Nothing in your kitchen changes and you keep using it.
The wait after that is your components being cut. Eagle Woodworking makes your doors and dovetailed drawer boxes in Lawrence and Methuen rather than in a national warehouse, which is why this is the fast half of the trade.
Then we come back for the fitting. Day one your old doors and fronts come off, your face frames and end panels are prepped and the veneer goes on. Day two your new doors and fronts go up and every hinge gets set until the reveals read parallel down the run. A larger kitchen, or one where a failed box has to be replaced at $400 to $1,400, takes a third day.
You keep your sink and your range the whole time, which is the real difference against a 4 to 12 week custom build. Our cabinet cost guide has the refacing tables and how long custom cabinets take to build covers the other queue. On a pre-1978 kitchen, the lead paint rules add about half a day to your fitting.
Related questions
Can I use the kitchen while refacing is happening?
Yes, apart from the doors being off for two or three days. Your plumbing, your appliances and your countertop never move, so cooking carries on around us in a way it cannot on a build.
What makes a refacing job run late?
Almost always something found once the doors come off. A swollen sink base or a crumbled dishwasher end panel adds a box at $400 to $1,400 and a day, which is why we probe both before quoting rather than after.
Is a lead-safe kitchen slower?
By about half a day. Containing the room and cleaning it down with a HEPA vacuum and a wet wipe adds time and the $350 to $1,200 line, and on a pre-1978 kitchen we plan the schedule around it rather than treating it as an extra.