Reusing old cabinets in new kitchen or replace all?

11 years ago

We are in the process of doing an addition and will be moving our kitchen into the new space. Our current kitchen has old Crystal cabinets (frameless with particleboard interiors) and we had planned on reusing as many of the existing cabinets as possible. Our kitchen designer came up with a plan that is a great layout and involves reusing most of our lower cabinets (which are primarily drawers) but buying mostly new upper cabinets (except for the corner lazy Susan type cabinet). Just this week (long after the plan had been finalized, though we have been bugging her about modifying one of the existing cabinets to accommodate a microwave), she suggested that we consider buying all new cabinets because it wouldn't cost that much more and we'd get all plywood cabinets with dovetail drawers and soft close drawers. She priced it out with Executive Cabinetry, which looks like a nice and relatively green line. She's also worried about the old cabinets matching the new ones because they are so old, but I'm not actually that concerned because there are very few places where new and old cabinets are directly adjacent and the few places they are adjacent there is a visual break of an appliance or an angle. But basically the cabinet quality is such that old Crystal Obviously it would be most green to reuse our existing cabinets, but we are also worried that there might be some headaches with trying to reuse our existing cabinets since they are frameless and not a wood interior and maybe the extra expense is worth avoiding the headache. Our contractor thinks that if we can afford it, we should go for the new cabinets. He was also surprised she could get all wood cabinets at the price she quoted (though of course now she is mentioning all the customization we could do like a cutlery drawer, which I am sure adds up).

Anyone have experience with this or advice? It is late enough in the game that we should probably decide in the next week -- field measurements are at the end of the week (though Executive has a much shorter lead time than Crystal). Thanks!

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betshsu
Original Author

11 years ago

Thanks for sharing your experience. We may be able to reuse our cabinets in another project in a year or so, which would make me feel less bad about replacing (though have to figure out storage until then...). But yeah, we'd definitely try to donate if we can't use in our other project.

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Comments (6)

User
11 years ago
Last year at this time I was contemplating something similar. My remodel was sparked by the need to replace 2 broken appliances, but my layout was workable and the cabs weren't bad.

First I was going to paint the existing cabs, then I looked into replacing a huge pantry piece with more usable drawers. Then I talked to someone about retrofitting using rev-a-shelves. Then we thought about keeping cabs, but replacing the island with one with better storage.

In the end I got all new cabinetry. I'm so glad I did. It's likely the last kitchen I'll have in this home and it has the storage and layout that works best for me with no compromises.

My kitchen gets a lot of daily use and the expense was worth it to me. By the time we'd done all the work & retrofitting with my other plans it would have been okay, but now it's just right.

My old cabs and counters are stored in my DD's garage. She & her DH will be using them to renovate their kitchen and are thrilled to have them. Had they not been doing this, we would have donated them to Restore.

It depends on your circumstance and budget, but IMO, if you can afford to I'd choose to go with all new cabs.
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annkh_nd
11 years ago
I can't say if reusing your old cabinets is the best option, but I know that we were able to find homes for all of our old cabs except the sink base (which I had to destroy to get out) and the crappy base lazy susans, which were not worth using again. The rest are in my laundry room, garage, neighbor's garage, and other neighbor's store room.

Re: cutlery drawer - I would not order one with the cabinets. Search here for some great aftermarket solutions that are custom sized and reasonably priced.
sjhockeyfan325
11 years ago
We also gave away our old cabinets (which were definitely NOT staying, but I hated to throw them out) - our electrician took them for his garage workshop. I think with a new addition, I'd want to "get it right", and would do new cabinets if I could swing the $$$.
funkycamper
11 years ago
I agree that you should get new if you can afford it. That said, we're cheapies and our old cabinets have wood boxes and all doors/slides are in amazing condition for a 40+ year old kitchen. So we are re-using our old cabinets and have been haunting Habitat ReStores for the four additional cabinets we need for our remodel, buying new door fronts and painting. We're saving about $4500 (at IKEA prices) this way which, to me, is worth the work of painting. However, if our current cabinets weren't in such fantastic shape and such good quality to begin with, we wouldn't even consider it.

Once we start taking out the old cabinets and re-positioning them in another month or so, if we find that they don't survive being moved around as well as we believe they should, we'll have no hesitation in purchasing new cabinets instead.
betshsu
11 years ago
Thanks all! The general consensus (both here and elsewhere) seems to be to go with all new if we can swing it in our budget.