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Three Ways To Improve Plastic Laminate Cabinets

If you have an outdated set of Formica plastic laminate cabinets and want to improve them without spending a lot of money, I can help. I won’t physically help, but in this article I will share with you several ways you can upgrade an old outdated looking set of kitchen cabinets. These ideas will work for bathroom vanity cabinets as well.

Option One-Upgrading By Replacing Cabinet Doors
There are thousands of design options available on the market for new cabinet doors. I do not recommend that you try to replace your kitchen or bathroom cabinetry doors yourself unless you have a certain level of finish carpentry skill. There are several cabinet door price ranges to be considered.


You basically have three choices when it comes to upgrading your cabinet doors:Rolling Paint On Formica Cabinets

  1. Re-laminating Formica Cabinet Doors-You can cover over the existing laminate with new Formica if your existing cabinet doors are in good condition.
  2. Have New Laminate Doors Made-It is oftentimes better to just have new Formica cabinet doors made rather than trying to resurface the old ones. Many of the real old laminate cabinet doors where painted on the back making them really look outdated.
  3. Install A Different Style Door-The two door options available for changing the look of your kitchen or bathroom cabinets are real wood doors or thermofoil cabinet doors. The thermofoil ones are the lessor expensive of the two. Generally, if you decide to go with real wood doors, you will have to resurface the Formica cabinet faces to match the tone of the wood grain.

Tip: Make sure you replace old hinges and repair all of the problems you may be having with the drawers. Many people have all new drawers installed when replacing the doors. This is also an opportune time to consider adding roll-out drawers to the existing cabinets. There are many gadgets that can be added to improve your Formica cabinets.

Option 2-Upgrading Formica Plastic Laminate Cabinets By Painting Them

There are two methods you can take, you can roll and brush the paint on or spray it on. If you choose to spray paint in your home, be aware that everything in the surrounding are that you do not want paint residue to get on should be covered.

Recommended Paint

There are many products available for upgrading Formica plastic laminate cabinets by painting them. My favorite is called Cabinet Rescue. Any oil based paint will work. You just have to make sure the surface is completely free from old grease and grime.

Option 3-Resurfacing Everything With New Formica Laminate

This is a job that must be done by a professional. You can read all about the things you must know here: Information About GettingĀ  Cabinets Resurfaced. This is the most expensive of the three suggestions in this article for upgrading Formica cupboards in the kitchen or bathroom.

Of the three choices I have presented here, they can be intermixed. For instance, you can order new solid colored doors and then paint the cabinet surfaces to match. You can also recover all of the cabinet parts with new Formica and install raised panel doors. The least expensive option is going to be painting over the existing plastic laminate. No, this is not the most durable choice for remodeling Formica cabinets. The improvement that would outlast all of them would be to have new plastic laminate doors made and recover the existing cabinets with new laminate.

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