Question
We have been asked to bid on refacing 246 apartments. The existing cabinets are vinyl on particle board; the new doors will be foil wrapped. They have suggested laminating the face frames with matching laminate, but I think this is a problem waiting to happen. It seems that if we try to sand the vinyl faces of the frames, the belts will clog quickly. The other problem that may occur is the vinyl might not stay stuck to the face frame edges (the face frames are particleboard wrapped on 4 sides) and come loose after time.
We can get new face frame material that is wrapped with the same foil material as the doors. We would then make new face frames, knock off the old ones, and nail on the new ones. The existing frames are face nailed to the cabinet boxes, so we should be able to get away with this. A little putty could be used to fill the nail holes. There is only one inside corner in some apartments to deal with - most of the job is wall to wall conditions or finished ends, so removing the frames seems easy.
Has anyone out there done this type of project? Am I overlooking anything else that would cause me to wish I never quoted this? It seems like possibly a good job in that it would be only 2 or 3 apartments per month, a good fill-in job, and steady work. We recently completed a job supplying 10 cabinets per week for 22 weeks, and that came out sweet for us.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor A:
I think you could leave the old frames on and screw your new frames on through the old frames into the PB box. I think price is what apartment managers look at.
