Refacing can transform a tired kitchen for a third of the price of a full replacement — if your boxes are sound and your layout already works. Pick wrong and you either overspend by $20,000 or you wrap a beautiful new face around cabinetry that will fail in five years. Here's how 26 years of Greater Boston kitchen remodels frame the decision.
Choose Refacing if your existing cabinet boxes are structurally solid, the kitchen layout already works for how you cook, and your budget is roughly half of what a replacement would cost. Best for 1990s and 2000s kitchens with good boxes but dated oak doors.
Choose Replacement if you want to change the layout, push uppers to the ceiling, add or remove an island, take down a wall, or your existing boxes are water-damaged, sagging, or built from particleboard that's starting to deteriorate.
Most popular in Boston in 2026: Replacement still wins about 65% of our kitchen projects, but refacing has grown to nearly 35% as homeowners look for faster, lower-cost refreshes.
Upload a photo of your current kitchen and our AI will show you what it looks like with new shaker doors in white, navy, or sage. Side by side with a full replacement layout. In seconds.
✨ Try the Free AI DesignerCabinet refacing is exactly what it sounds like — your existing cabinet boxes stay screwed to the wall, and the visible surfaces (doors, drawer fronts, end panels, and the face frame) get replaced or covered with a new veneer. New hinges, new pulls, and usually new soft-close drawer slides go in at the same time. The interior of the boxes typically gets a light cleaning and sometimes a coat of paint, but the structural cabinetry stays in place for another decade.
Cabinet replacement means tearing out everything down to the studs — old boxes, doors, hardware, sometimes the soffit above and the flooring underneath — and starting fresh. New cabinet runs are designed to your current layout (or a brand-new one), uppers can run all the way to a 10-foot ceiling, walls can come down, an island can be added, plumbing and electrical can be moved, and you finish with a kitchen that fits your life rather than the life of whoever owned the house in 1988.
Pricing for a typical 10x10 to 12x12 Greater Boston kitchen, installed:
Pricing reflects Greater Boston market as of April 2026. Refacing pricing includes all visible doors, drawer fronts, end panels, hinges, and pulls. Replacement pricing includes new cabinets and installation but not countertops, backsplash, flooring, plumbing, or electrical work.
Cabinet refacing only makes sense when the boxes underneath were built right in the first place. The sweet spot for refacing in Greater Boston is the 1990 to 2010 housing stock in Newton, Wellesley, Needham, and Lexington — kitchens that were originally built with quality plywood-box semi-custom cabinetry but now have golden oak doors, brass pulls, and rounded ogee profiles that feel dated to today's buyers. Reface those for $9,000 to $13,000 and the kitchen reads contemporary again. We've done dozens of these in the last three years.
Replacement is almost always the right answer in older Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Boston triple-deckers — kitchens that have already been remodeled two or three times since World War II, often with thin particleboard cabinets installed during a 1990s flip, awkward layouts wrapped around removed chimneys, and water damage from a half-century of slow under-sink leaks. Refacing those would just be putting lipstick on cabinetry that's a year or two from collapse anyway.
In the MetroWest towns we work in — Wayland, Sudbury, Sherborn, Dover, and out toward Concord and Carlisle — the deciding factor is usually whether the homeowner wants to take down the wall to the dining room. The minute that wall comes down, refacing is off the table because the cabinet runs are about to change. If the wall stays, refacing is a smart way to redirect $15,000 into appliances, lighting, and a stone backsplash instead.
Upload a photo of your current kitchen and watch our AI generate two versions: a refaced refresh of your existing layout, and a fully redesigned replacement. Decide with your eyes. Free for Greater Boston homeowners.
✨ Try the Free AI DesignerCabinet refacing in Greater Boston runs $4,000-$15,000 in 2026 for a typical 10x10 to 12x12 kitchen. Pricing depends on door material (rigid thermofoil at the low end, solid wood at the high end), drawer count, and whether you upgrade hinges, slides, and accessories at the same time.
Full cabinet replacement in Greater Boston runs $10,000-$45,000+ in 2026 depending on tier. With demo, plumbing, electrical, drywall, and finish work, a complete replacement project typically lands in the $18,000-$60,000 range fully installed.
Refacing is typically 3-5 working days on-site once materials arrive, and your kitchen stays mostly functional. Full replacement runs 1-3 weeks of demo and install, plus countertop template and fabrication that can extend the no-kitchen window to 4-6 weeks.
Refacing is worth it when your existing boxes are structurally solid, the layout already works, and your budget is half of a replacement. Replace instead when you want a different layout, taller uppers, an island where there isn't one, or when the boxes are damaged or deteriorating particleboard.
A quality cabinet refacing project in Greater Boston typically recovers about 70% of cost at resale, while full replacement recovers 60-80% depending on tier and overall scope. The dollars-back ratio often favors refacing because the spend is so much lower for similar listing-photo impact.
Whether you reface or replace, RD Horizon Builders will walk your kitchen, look behind the cabinet doors, and give you an honest recommendation. Free in-home consultation across Greater Boston and MetroWest.
