Can I Keep My Existing Granite Countertops If I Reface the Cabinets?

This is one of the best questions a homeowner can ask, because the answer saves real money and solves a real fear. Yes, you can absolutely keep your existing granite or quartz countertops when you reface your cabinets. In fact, this is one of the biggest advantages refacing has over a full cabinet replacement: it protects the expensive stone that a tear-out would likely destroy.

If you love your countertops, but your cabinets are dated, damaged, or just not your style, this is exactly the situation refacing was made for. And even if your countertops aren’t your favorite, we can help you come up with a design plan that will help you keep the countertops, but have them integrated more seamlessly into the overall kitchen design.

Why Refacing Protects Your Countertops

Cabinet refacing works with your existing cabinet boxes in place. We replace or resurface the doors, drawer fronts, and visible cabinet faces without removing the boxes, which means your countertops stay exactly where they are, undisturbed. Your granite is never lifted, cut, or stressed. The entire transformation happens around it. Like in the photos below, the backsplash and countertops remain the same, but the cabinets are totally refreshed. And when the cabinets are refreshed, so is the whole kitchen’s overall look!

Contrast that with a full cabinet replacement. To install new cabinet boxes, the old boxes have to come out, and that almost always means removing the countertops first. Granite and quartz slabs are heavy, rigid, and often bonded down with adhesive. The odds of removing a stone countertop intact for reinstallation are low, most crack or break during removal. So a full replacement usually means buying new countertops too, whether you wanted to or not. That’s thousands of dollars of stone you already own, gone.

The Real Savings

Keeping your countertops is a large part of why refacing costs a fraction of full replacement. You’re not paying to demolish and haul away your boxes, you’re not paying for new countertops, and you’re not paying to fabricate and install new stone. You’re transforming the look of the kitchen while preserving the parts that are still perfectly good. For homeowners who invested in high-end granite or quartz, this is often the deciding factor.

Designing the New Cabinets Around Your Stone

Because your countertops are staying, they become the anchor for the new cabinet color and style, and that’s a good thing. We help you choose door styles and finishes that make your existing granite or quartz look intentional and current. A busy granite can be calmed with simple shaker doors in a solid color; a cool-toned quartz can be warmed with a natural wood island. Because color-matching and finishing is what we do, we can tune the new cabinet finish, using our General Finishes low-VOC products, to complement the exact tones in your stone. Your kitchen is in great hands with us.

Occasionally a countertop is at the end of its life and a homeowner wants to replace it anyway, in which case we coordinate the timing. But if you love your counters, there’s no reason to lose them. Refacing keeps them and builds a beautiful new kitchen around them.

Want to see how your existing countertops would look with refaced cabinets? Call Cabinet Refresh at (888) 885-2058 for a free in-home consultation. We serve Los Angeles, Orange County, and surrounding areas.