A waterborne bonding primer grips surfaces that ordinary primer slides off, which is what makes slick factory doors paintable at all. Intact thermofoil, melamine and high-pressure laminate all coat up well, and doors already peeling do not.
Condo towers along King Street East, rental units through the lower city and the 2005 to 2015 builds in Binbrook and Mount Hope are full of this material. Cabinet painting on these kitchens is usually about colour rather than age, because the doors are only fifteen or twenty years old.
Thermofoil Is A Vinyl Skin And Heat Is What Lifts It
Paint cannot stick a lifting skin back down, so a peeling door is not a cabinet painting job. The failure starts beside the dishwasher and above the range because that is where steam and heat hit the edge of the door, and once the vinyl has released it keeps going.
There are two honest options for a delaminated door. It gets stripped with heat back to the bare MDF underneath and then treated as a raw board, or it gets replaced with a new door and painted to match the rest of the kitchen. Stripping is slow work, priced one door at a time, which is why a kitchen with several failed doors is often better served by cabinet refacing and door replacement.
Melamine And Laminate Take Cabinet Painting Well With The Right Primer
Melamine is paper and resin pressed onto particleboard, and it is completely paintable once it has been scuffed and bonded. The surface gets a thorough degreasing, a light sand to kill the sheen, then a waterborne bonding primer made for slick substrates such as glazed tile and laminate.
Bonding primer is not a stain blocker, so any water stain or marker bleeding through needs shellac in that spot first. The primer needs three to four hours before a topcoat and reaches full adhesion over three to four days, which sets the pace of the cabinet painting schedule rather than the topcoat doing it.
The edges are where melamine gives way first. It breaks away at corners and along the bottom rail where feet and vacuum cleaners hit it, so those edges get filled and sanded before primer instead of being coated over.
What Cannot Be Painted Gets Said Before The Quote Is Written
Some cabinets should not be painted at all, and we would rather say so at the visit. Swollen particleboard under a leaking sink, boxes that have taken water and lost their structure, and doors whose skin is already lifting in several places all fall outside sensible cabinet painting work.
That conversation costs us jobs sometimes. It is still the right conversation, because a coating over a failing substrate fails with the substrate and the money is gone. Where only one or two doors are beyond saving, the rest of the kitchen is painted and those doors are replaced.
Rental And Condo Kitchens Have Their Own Cabinet Painting Constraints
Turnaround and odour matter more here than anywhere else. A landlord between tenants needs the unit back quickly, and a condo board needs the corridors kept clean and the elevator booked, which is covered further under condo kitchen cabinet painting.
Bonding primer over laminate or thermofoil adds roughly $150 to $400 to a kitchen over a straightforward wood job, and a small galley kitchen in this material generally lands between $1,500 and $2,800 for cabinet painting. Those are Ontario market ranges, and the written quote is the number that governs the work.
Find Out Whether These Cabinets Can Be Painted
The only way to know is to look at the doors, particularly the two beside the dishwasher. We test the surface, check the edges and put the cabinet painting scope in writing at no charge. Call +1 (289) 201-5389, describe the kitchen here or read about the wider range of cabinet painting work.
Thermofoil, Melamine and Laminate Cabinet Painting Questions
Can thermofoil really be painted?
Intact thermofoil can, with a waterborne bonding primer. Doors that are already peeling cannot. Heat lifts the vinyl skin first beside the dishwasher and the range, so those doors are checked before the quote is written.
Does melamine hold paint?
Yes, with the right primer. Melamine and high-pressure laminate are slick, so the surface is degreased and scuff sanded, then a bonding primer goes on. Thin sprayed coats follow and are left to cure.
What cannot be painted?
Thermofoil already lifting, particleboard swollen by a leaking sink and boxes that have lost their structure are outside what a coating can fix. That is said before the quote is written, not after.