[jenlion]

I have a cheap white thermofoil kitchen with damaged and mismatched doors. I can't identify the manufacturer; no stickers, no nothing, in any of the cabinets.

I'm sort of wondering, though... these cabinets are standard sizes. Zero custom anything here. They're full-coverage, so when the doors are shut, you see nothing.Just white door.

I want to replace the door fronts. I got a quote for a re-door at four thousand dollars. I could replace every cabinet in the kitchen (at ikea) for that much! (Waiting on other quotes, but not optimistic.) Sadly, I do not want to spend that much, and neither my husband nor I wants the work involved in replacing the entire kitchen. Especially not over a few damaged doors.

What I really want to do is just replace the damaged, mismatched thermofoil doors. I understand I'll never get an exact match so I have to replace them all, not just the three bad ones. Fine. But ... shouldn't I be able to replace them with doors from ANYWHERE standard? And here's Ikea, nearby, less expensive, and, in the future, completely changeable if damage occurs again?

I pulled a door from the bathroom vanity (actually a modified-for-depth kitchen cabinet) and one of the hinges is not in exactly the same place, so we'd have to modify the existing cabinets to accept an ikea door. But is that so crazy? Are the standard sizes standard pretty much everywhere? Is it plausible to think we could swap out for ikea doors, or totally nuts?

Seems like I could use the matching ikea side panels to cover anything exposed, just order large and cut to what shape I need, and I think there is some way to match the cabinet fronts if the white you see when you open the cabinet is TOO glaringly different from the ikea white. Is that right? Or nuts?

If somebody has done this, or knows WHY, as the expensive-pro-redoor-guy say, it just can't-be-done-because-you-can't-do-that, I'm all ears.

Thanks!

[SteveVA]

I think you've hit on the problem. It's not so much the size of the door - I assume you can get a comparable size from IKEA. It's the location of the door/cabinet hinges,

If it's simply drilling an additional screw hole or two so the hinges line up, then you should have no problem. However, if it involves filling in the old hinge recesses and drilling out new ones on the door, and possible the cabinet you looking at a lot of work, especially if you don't have the power tools and jigs (drilling templates) to do the job accurately.

If that's the case it would be far easier to replace the entire cabinet. You're talking 15-20 minutes to assemble the cabinet and maybe a hour to hang it level, plumb and true without using the IKEA mounting rail. The alternative is filling in screw holes in and gluing in inserts to cover the original hinge recesses, then drilling new ones so the hardware will line up properly. Unless you have a good woodworking set up, it'll be a challenging amount of work.

[WRC]

You might consider doors from a place like Manufacturer of Cabinet Doors, Dovetail Drawer Boxes, RTA Cabinet Kits... Scherr's Cabinet and Doors and possibly even get them them to drill for existing hinges or hinge spacing. Just a though.

Buy one Ikea door and test it out and see what's required - wither new hinges almost over old holes.