Reface in Place
Kitchen cabinet refacing may be considerably less expensive than a full kitchen remodel, but it’s also a highly specialized business that requires installation expertise and vendor sources. “To do refacing is not as easy as it is to do new kitchens,” says Vince Nardo, president of Reborn Cabinets, a Los Angeles–area company started 27 years ago.
Reborn Cabinets, which offers both cabinet refacing and full kitchen remodeling out of its 10,000-square-foot Anaheim showroom, saw its jobs tilt from full remodels to refacing as the recession deepened from 2008 into 2009. Last year, Nardo says, Reborn Cabinets’ business was probably 60% refacing and 40% full remodels, though the company does many jobs that are a hybrid of the two. “In 2005 through 2007, we saw a lot of big $80,000 to $100,000 kitchen remodels,” Nardo says. “A lot more new kitchens than refacing jobs.” When housing values slid, and with them home equity, the situation reversed. But company sales reps typically present both solutions in an effort to meet the client’s budgetary and aesthetic needs. Refacing, Nardo says, is “just another method of remodeling your kitchen. If [homeowners] don’t want to go for the whole remodel because of time and budget, then refacing appeals.” Refacing offers a whole new look and feel without altering functionality, and it’s not always inexpensive. A Reborn Cabinets’ top-of-the-line refacing job could sell for as much as $35,000.
What refacing always is, though, is fast. It offers “instant gratification,” says Dave Cerami, who operates a high-end cabinet refacing company,
Let’s Face It, as well as a design/build company specializing in full kitchen remodels called
Home Tech Renovations, both in Lansdale, Pa. Remodeling and refacing “are two separate markets, like GM has Cadillac and Chevy,” Cerami says. A Let’s Face It job might take three or four weeks from contract to completion; a Home Tech Renovations job takes three or four months. (
Click here to see a video of a recent full-scale kitchen remodel by Home Tech Renovations on YouTube.)
But Cerami says that he has seen no big movement of kitchen remodel customers toward cabinet refacing as a low-cost alternative. “The typical refacing client is one of the hardest-hit,” he says. “The need is there but the impetus to move the project forward is not.” A sluggish existing home market hasn’t helped, since those typical refacing customers, for Cerami, are existing home buyers, and such buyers are far fewer.
Pie a Little Smaller
A recessionary economy has clearly put homeowners in the driver’s seat. “I never thought we’d sell a $35,000 kitchen,” says Gary Callier, of Callier & Thompson, a St. Louis-area company specializing in kitchens and baths. Now the company sells $30,000 to $35,000 full kitchens “all the time.” Callier says that 18 months ago 80% of the company’s customers didn’t bother getting a second bid. “We’ve been around for 55 years,” he explains. And homeowners knew what they wanted. Now, 80% get that second or third bid, and the company has found itself competing with freelance carpenters formerly employed by the new-home construction industry. “It’s harder to get that dollar, and harder to let go of it,” he explains. “You’ve got this pie out there that’s a little smaller.”
Callier & Thompson’s response was to open a division called Affordable Kitchens, where contractors and do-it-yourself homeowners can buy appliances, countertops, or cabinets on a cash-and-carry basis. Sales from that operation — a little more than $3 million last year — helped leverage a drop in sales of full kitchen and bath remodels at the company.
What has helped to shrink the pie is credit, or lack thereof. “People are paying cash,” notes Steve Klein, president of Anthony Home Improvements, a kitchen remodeling company that sells out of 59 Home Depot stores in the Mid-Atlantic states. “They’re saying: ‘I only have x amount of money, so I’m cutting the job down.” In which case, he adds, they might want to think about refacing. “It’s want versus need,” Klein points out, adding, “The good news is, there are a lot of options.”
Mark Uchida, owner of A ReMARKable Kitchen Store, in Blawnox, Pa., and himself a one-time refacing installer, says that the customers he talks to who can’t afford the custom kitchen they want simply postpone their project. Cerami agrees. “No one’s going to say: ‘I’m going to buy a laminate countertop now,’ when they want stone. If they can’t afford it, they’re disappointed, but they will wait.”
But the bathroom may be another matter. With Dutchess Building Specialists set to display its new budget bathroom package at area home shows — complete with an illustrated catalog listing products — Altman is considering whether to take the next logical step and offer a line of acrylic bath products as well.
—Jim Cory is editor of Replacement Contractor, a sister publication of Remodeling.
This is a longer version of an article that appeared in the May 2010 issue of REMODELING.
