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FAQ

It’s your home.
Why wouldn’t you have questions?

About Refinishing
I had a friend who had their cabinets painted. They began to peel almost instantly…

Your friend clearly either didn’t call us, or they did, and went with one of our cheaper competitors instead 🙂

Cabinets are a tough substrate to get fantastic adhesion on. You really need to know what you’re doing and invest the labour and money into the best products in order to nail it. If you skimp on the prep, or don’t use the correct high adhesion primers, you can have a complete adhesion failure like your unfortunate friend had. We’ve spent years testing different products and refining our system to the point where we are proud and confident to offer a 5-year no peel warranty.

Can I choose any colour?

Yes! Any Benjamin Moore colour you would like to choose, we can match.

Do you re-stain or reface cabinets?

Unfortunately, we don’t offer any of these services at this point in time.

About the Services
I heard you do amazingly fast and efficient full kitchen renovations. Is that true?

Definitely. We can now replace your countertops, backsplash, flooring, and wall paint. The entire process takes under 2 weeks. That comes with full project management, calendars that show you the daily progress of your reno, and cloud based material selections sheets so you can keep all of your selections in one place! We also offer designer consultations to help put it all together and make your dream a reality.

We want to add/change/modify some cabinets, can you help?

Yup! We have done many simple modifications for clients such as adding gable ends or removing a raised bar countertop. But we’ve also recently partnered with a fantastic custom cabinetry supply company, Duke Millwork, so we can now add all elements of custom cabinetry to your kitchen.

Can you add soft close hardware to my kitchen?

We’d be happy to! We can replace your existing door hinges with new soft-close hinges and (in almost every kitchen) we can add soft-close functionality to your drawers as well. There are some drawer types that don’t allow this modification, but they are quite rare.

About the Process
Do I have to empty my cupboards?

Nope! Once we have taken your kitchen apart, we tape off the cabinet interiors so that your personal items are safely sealed in.

Is it safe to be inside the home while you work?

Absolutely. We seal off our work area completely so that you can go on about your daily life (minus the kitchen area).

Do you spray everything? Is anything hand painted?

EVERYTHING, and we mean EVERYTHING, gets the same high-quality spray finish. We want your friends to think you actually got new cabinets.

Some of the lower cost companies will spray your doors in a facility (great!) and then come to hand paint your cabinets with a totally different (and less durable) product. Your doors will (ideally) look great, but your cabinets will (definitely) look and feel like a do-it-yourself project. 

What kind of paint do you use?

It’s top secret really, but what we can tell you is that we use what’s known as a waterborne lacquer. Solvent borne lacquer is a traditional cabinet finish for any solid colour finishing. But it is so toxic, it’s illegal to be sprayed anywhere but in a shop facility.

We use a waterborne version designed to apply and perform in the same manner, but be much lower in VOC’s (volatile organic compounds aka harmful fumes) and more environmentally conscious. We have searched far and wide for the world’s best waterborne coating for our application. We have this product specially imported from a company in Italy (think Ferrari, not Fiat) as they are the leaders in developing this technology (years ahead of North American manufacturers). The product is extremely low VOC, lower in VOC’s than most low VOC wall paints. Yet the product performs like no other. This is a special industrial coating available only to the cabinet industry. While we love Benjamin Moore and other consumer grade paints for their own respective applications, they can’t touch what we have sourced for our purposes.

Do you spray everything on site?

Yes, we will build a sealed wall of plastic around our work area so all of the dust etc is contained. Within that area we prep and spray all of the elements of the cabinets.

About the Cabinet Painting Vancouver Difference
I found a cheaper quote. Why shouldn’t I go with them?

The old adage that you get what you pay for couldn’t be more true than when you are considering a skilled trades service company. Look, we all have to live in the same hideously expensive city, as do our staff. They’re our major expense. We want to keep them housed, fed, clean, sober, happy, healthy, and well-trained. We also try to do more for our staff like compensate them for travel time (as we travel huge distances across a deluge of traffic) to get to you, and give them performance bonuses to make sure they always do their best for you. Then we have our overhead like WCB, a $5 million liability insurance policy, tools, and vehicles. We also invest in the absolute best and safest waterborne products on the market to ensure that your investment stands the test of time.

The cherry on top is our outstanding efficiency in managing your projects to completion, and our mobile touch up truck should you ever need a little love down the road. Our lower priced competitors will have to drastically cut back on a few of those fronts to save you money. Would you prefer disgruntled and under-trained staff, no insurance or WCB, substandard products so you have to call us to redo your cabinets, or a job that ends up costing double and taking an extra 2 weeks? 😉

You may think we’re being dramatic, but these are actual issues we’ve heard about when people reach out to us after using “the other guys”.

What does your 5-year “No Peel” warranty cover?

This is a great question that surprisingly not enough people ask! 

It’s a “no peel” guarantee, which protects you against any catastrophic failure of our coatings to adhere to your cabinets. While this has yet to happen, because we are very thorough, it is to reassure you that you won’t have the problem your friend had when they hired “some guy” to paint their cabinets and the next day you could peel the entire coating off with your bare hands. That “some guy” is usually then suddenly very hard to reach…

As with any cabinet finish, it has its limitations. If you smack a door hard with a cast iron pan, there’s a good chance some damage will occur. The warranty does not cover chips, scratches, cracks resulting from expansion and contraction of doors or other parts of the cabinets, or general wear and tear. However, for those unexpected accidents, we have our mobile refinishing truck, which can do respray doors for a small site visit fee, and will keep your cabinets looking brand new for decades to come.

Ok so, how long does the finish last?

The short answer is 5 to10+ years. 

The honest answer is it really depends on you. It functions in much the same way a  car does that is neglected, driven hard, not cleaned, and not maintained. After 10 years, it will look and perform vastly different than a car whose owner babies it, drives defensively, and does oil regular oil changes and other maintenance. Do you have children? Do you have pets? Did you follow the after care instructions? Are you the type of person who wraps your furniture in plastic to preserve it (Hi Grandma!) Do you and your spouse like to settle disagreements by throwing heavy objects? Do you voice your displeasure by slamming doors? Did you have the foresight to have us install soft-close hardware on your doors and drawers? These can all affect the life of your finish. We do, however, check in regularly with some of our original clients to see how their cabinets are holding up and they are still happy more than 5 years later.

Do you have some kind of long term maintenance plan in case I need a touchup?

We’re so glad you asked. Yes!

When we finish your refinishing, we leave you with a can of touchup lacquer and also keep your colour information on file. Should your cabinets ever need some love, we will bring over our mobile refinishing truck and use that touchup paint to respray any door or fixed panel with an issue and we’ll have it back in about an hour looking good as new.

What’s the cost of the mobile touchup visit?

$200 for 1-3 doors and $25 per door beyond that. Fixed panels count as a door as well.

About the Warranty & Free Touch Ups

What does my "Lifetime Warranty" cover?

Cabinet Painting Vancouver provides a limited lifetime warranty, for as long as you own your home, in the event that your cabinet coating should lose adhesion over a large area or areas, or crack or flake due to improper preparation of the surface or improper application of our finishing products. We guarantee our craftsmanship on cabinet refinishing for the same period.

The warranty does not cover small chips, scratches, or damage resulting from normal wear and tear, though we can help to repair it via our free touch ups program.

The warranty is limited to the labour and material required to perform the remediation work for a single occurrence only. If the leftover touch-up paint has been discarded or has been improperly kept and is unusable, material charges will apply for any paint required. 

What is NOT covered by my "Lifetime Warranty"?

The warranty is limited to the labour and material required to perform the remediation work for a single occurrence only. If the leftover touch-up paint has been discarded or has been improperly kept and is unusable, material charges will apply for any paint required. 

The Warranty does NOT cover the following:

  • Cleaning of cabinets with something other than a soft cloth and soapy water ie. abrasive sponges or harsh chemical cleaners
  • A failure of the original paint or coating on the cabinets which is then causing our coating to fail
  • Areas subject to water or steam damage
  • Issues caused by the expansion or contraction of wood as it adapts to atmospheric changes in temperature and humidity. (This can include cracking, lifting, or peeling on wood doors.)
  • Hairline cracks developing at the joints in wood doors due to expansion and contraction
  • Improper environmental conditions such as extreme temperatures or changes in humidity
  • Regular wear and tear from daily use.
  • Damage resulting from cabinets rubbing against, or coming into contact from other cabinets or kitchen objects/appliances.
  • Stains in the finish
  • Areas that have been caulked are also not covered.

Any invoice not paid in full, or paid more than 30 days from the date of invoice, will void any and all warranties.

Though the warranty does not cover small chips, scratches, or damage resulting from normal wear and tear, we can help to repair it via our free touch ups program (see above).

Can I transfer my warranty?

Should you sell your property within 6 months of the completion of the work, the warranty can, in this case, be transferred to the new owners.

Do you have some kind of long term maintenance plan in case I need a touchup?

As a client of Cabinet Painting Vancouver from March 2023 onward, you are entitled to use of our free touchups program! Touchups can be booked through our website, to be performed in the months of December and January.

Touchups are limited to 1hr of work on site, and the touchups are to be done by brush only. 

If a piece is required to be resprayed in our shop, there will be a charge $180 for 1-3 pieces. Additional pieces can be quoted if required. Should the touchup paint left behind on site be discarded or unusable, an additional charge for materials will be required.

Touchups can be used to remedy defects that are not covered by our warranty.

Can I use a free touchup on defects not covered by the Warranty?

Yes, touchups can be used to remedy defects that may not be covered by our warranty.

Still need help? Send us a note!

For any other questions, please write us at theExperts@cabinetpaintingvancouver.com or call us at 778-988-3898.