Cabinet painting cost in Calgary

Cabinet refinishing is not a rolling job. Doors and drawer fronts come off, get labelled, degreased, sanded and sprayed off-site or in a controlled area of the house; boxes and frames are masked and sprayed in place. The finish is a two-component or waterborne alkyd product built to survive fingernails, cleaners and dinner-time abuse — not wall paint.

Most of the cost is labour and dust control. A typical Calgary kitchen is three to five days of work: one for teardown and prep, two for spray and cure, one for reassembly and hardware.

Huge swathes of Calgary housing stock — Ranchlands, Woodbine, Dalhousie, most of the 1980s and 90s inner suburbs — have golden oak cabinets with pronounced open grain. Paint alone will not hide that grain; it telegraphs straight through the finish.

If you want the smooth modern look, the grain has to be filled and sanded first. That adds $400 to $1,200 to the kitchen but is the difference between a repaint that looks new and one that looks like painted oak. Maple, MDF and thermofoil doors skip this step entirely.

Replacing an average Calgary kitchen's cabinetry runs $12,000 to $30,000 and up once you count counters, plumbing moves and a week or two without a working kitchen. A refinish is typically 20–30% of that and done in under a week.

The honest limit: painting fixes the look, not the layout. If the boxes are water-damaged, the drawer slides are failing, or you hate where the fridge sits, paint is the wrong tool. If the layout works and the colour dates the room, refinishing wins every time.

A Coatly cabinet quote covers removal and labelling of doors and drawer fronts, degreasing, sanding, bonding primer, two sprayed finish coats, reassembly and hardware reinstall. Anything else — grain filling, box interiors, new hardware, glass inserts — is a visible line item you can add or remove.