Cabinet Refinishing in Alexandria, VA

In a galley there is no second counter to fall back on while we are in there. That is the honest constraint in Old Town and Del Ray. What we ask people to do before day one:

• Empty the base cabinets either side of the range and the sink first. Those stay open longest.
• Move the coffee, one pan, plates and anything anybody needs daily into another room.
• Count on keeping the sink and the range, with the counters either side of both covered.
• Plan four or five evenings where nobody cooks in that room.

Where the layout allows it we work one run at a time so you keep the other. In a true single-run galley that is not possible, and we say so at the estimate.

A good share of the cabinet work we do at an Alexandria address is in the 1940s garden communities and the condominium conversions. Those kitchens are small rooms with one doorway, often no window, and a hood that recirculates.

No air exchange changes the schedule. A coat in a sealed kitchen takes longer to release than the same coat with a window open, and putting the next one on early gives you a soft film that prints a permanent mark the first time a jar sits on a shelf. We use low odor lines, move air toward the entry where the building allows it propped and protected, and add time between coats.

Original cabinetry in those units is often birch or pressed metal, shallow, with a plaster soffit boxed in above it. The soffit usually wants painting with the kitchen, and the line along the top of the face frame is cut by hand. Certificates of insurance, work hours and an elevator booking are sorted before we arrive.

South and west of the city line, in Kingstowne, Franconia and Rose Hill, the houses are later and the material changes. A lot of what went into those late eighties and nineties kitchens is thermofoil, a vinyl film heat-wrapped over a shaped MDF door.

Where it fails is predictable: the door or filler panel beside a wall oven, or the front above a dishwasher that vents steam at the end of its cycle. Heat releases the adhesive and the film lifts at a corner or bubbles along an edge.

Paint does not reattach a lifted film. Coatings hold on intact thermofoil with the right bonding approach, but we will say when a substrate has already started letting go, because a finish over a failing door fails with the door.

The Hollin Hills houses on the county side have kitchens unlike anything else carrying this mailing address. Flat slab fronts, birch or mahogany, almost no applied trim, and wood that was specified to be looked at.

We will refinish them and we will argue with you first. A clear-finished slab door in sound condition is not something you get back once it has been primed. If yours are sound, the work worth paying for is a clean, a light abrasion and a fresh clear coat, with paint kept to the soffit, the walls and the trim.

Where a previous owner already painted them, the decision is made and we work from there. We check the slab edges first, because a veneer lifted at a corner has to be glued and clamped before any coating goes near it.

Fredy Vargas comes out, opens everything, counts the fronts, works out what the boxes and doors are made of, checks the sink base for old leak damage and feels the film beside the range. None of that can be judged from a photograph.

Alexandria sits at the far edge of our area, so our first available start here is usually further out than in Vienna. We give you a real date rather than a hopeful one.

Working since 2002. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured. No minimum job, so a single vanity in a Parkfairfax unit is real work to us. Ten percent off for veterans and anyone 65 or over. Call 703-869-0593.