M/C Cabinets specializes in refacing cabinets using such fine woods and precision finish work that is undetectable.
Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
Ask most homeowners what stops them from upgrading the look of their kitchens and you’ll hear three primary reasons: major disruption of one of the most important rooms in the house, the kitchen; dust, dirt and crews pounding away all day; and months of putting up with your home being a construction site.
But, there are alternatives. For over 12 years, Mike Hardin and Chuy Robles of M/C Cabinets have been giving kitchens a completely new look with no tear-out, or clouds of dust and dirt, and they can finish the job in two days.
M/C Cabinets specializes in refacing cabinets, primarily in kitchens, using such fine woods and precision finish work that the refacing is undetectable. Industry estimates are that the typical home has 15 kitchen cabinets, and that new cabinets account for up to 50 percent of the cost of redoing a kitchen.
Hardin, who acknowledges he’s a perfectionist, went into carpentry as a summer job while attending art school. He applied his sense of design to his carpentry work and gravitated to finish carpentry—all the little details and fine work it takes to finalize a job and give it a polished effect. Hardin and Robles met on a job site and soon became a team, with Hardin teaching Robles all the skills of finish carpentry. Eventually the two men opened up their own shop, M/C (Mike and Chuy) Cabinets.
Over time, Hardin developed new techniques that allowed the company to offer clients a quality upgrade for their kitchen cabinets, while shaving time and cost from the project by changing only the surfaces of the cabinets instead of pulling the entire structure out of the wall. Hardin and Robles streamlined the process and soon were able to narrow down the installation time to two days or less.
First they bring the client samples of wood, including doors, drawer fronts, finishes and hardware to chose from. Every visible surface is redone, including the sides and the underneath of hanging cabinets, not just the cabinet face. Once a choice is made, they remove all doors and drawer fronts and the remaining surfaces are carefully measured. M/C has been working with the same door manufacturer for 12 years and has only had to send back one door that was the incorrect size. That degree of reliability is one of the reasons that M/C can perform the work on schedule.
All cutting and sanding is done in the shop, and the homeowner doesn’t even have to empty the cabinets. Once all the wood is stained and lacquered, M/C then installs the new doors and drawers and covers all the surfaces with quarter-inch-thick matching material. The result is a change that can transform your kitchen at a fraction of the cost and time it would take to tear out and install new cabinets.
M/C Cabinets is located at 17526 Hwy 12, Sonoma. For further information, please call 707.939.1016
