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License # 770558
License # 770558
You had two companies come to your house. Both measured every cabinet, took photos, and both seemed professional. One company quoted you for $9,500 and the other quoted $17,200. You’re sitting at your kitchen table trying to figure out if you’re about to overpay by $7,700 — or get burned by the cheap one.
This is one of the most common and genuinely confusing situations homeowners face when evaluating refacing projects. The problem isn’t that one company is lying. The problem is that two companies using the phrase “cabinet refacing” can mean completely different things by it — different door materials, different veneer types, different finishing approaches, different scope of work — and neither quote will tell you this clearly unless you know what to ask.
Here’s the line-by-line breakdown of what actually creates that $8,000 gap;
Cabinet doors account for the largest portion of a refacing project’s material cost, and the material range is wide. Here are the four main options in order of cost and durability.
Thermofoil over MDF: The budget option. A heat-formed vinyl membrane pressed over an MDF core. Looks clean when installed. Susceptible to heat near the stove and dishwasher, and will eventually lift at edges.
Cost per door: $80–$120. Lifespan with good installation: 8–15 years.
RTF (Rigid Thermofoil) with routed profiles: A step up from flat thermofoil, with the ability to replicate shaker and raised-panel profiles. Same core material but more durability in the membrane.
Cost per door: $100–$150.
Painted MDF with solid wood face frames (stile-and-rail construction): The most common professional-grade option. Real wood frame around an MDF panel, factory-painted in a dust-controlled environment. Extremely stable, takes paint exceptionally well, resists the warping that solid wood is prone to in LA’s climate range.
Cost per door: $180–$280.
Solid wood stile-and-rail: The premium option. All-wood construction with real wood panels. Beautiful, repairable, and the most durable — but also the most expensive and most prone to seasonal movement in high-humidity or high-heat environments.
Cost per door: $250–$400+. On a 30-door kitchen, the difference between thermofoil and solid wood stile-and-rail doors alone is $5,100 to $8,400. That’s before you touch anything else in the quote. If two companies are quoting dramatically different numbers, this is almost always the first place to look.
Custom-measured doors are manufactured to your exact cabinet opening dimensions, with consistent reveals (the gap between the door edge and the face frame) on all four sides. They hang flush, align perfectly with adjacent doors, and look built-in. Manufacturing lead time is two to four weeks.
Stock doors are ordered in standard sizes — typically in 3” increments — and trimmed down to fit your opening. The reveal is uneven (one side might be 1/8”, the other 3/8”), alignment between adjacent doors is harder to achieve, and the overall effect is noticeably less polished in kitchens where the openings are non-standard sizes (which is most kitchens in older LA homes).
A company using stock doors can often turn a project around faster and charge less. But the result looks different — and not in a way that’s subtle. If you’re comparing quotes and one company has a significantly shorter timeline, ask whether the doors are custom-measured or stock. This question alone can explain several thousand dollars of price difference.
When you have answers to all of these from both companies, you’re no longer comparing numbers — you’re comparing actual projects.
In most cases, the gap narrows significantly because you discover that the cheaper quote is leaving out items the more expensive one includes.
In some cases, the more expensive quote is genuinely overbuilt for what your kitchen needs. Either way, you’re making an informed decision.