Who does cabinet painting in Melrose, MA?
EA Paint & Light Carpentry, Inc. does cabinet painting & refinishing in Melrose, MA, from Northborough, about 31.3 miles away. The median Melrose home was built in 1938 and 86% predate 1980, so the preparation drives the price more than the square footage. One insured crew paints and replaces rotted wood on the same written estimate. Call (508) 466-5846.
What Melrose houses are built out of — and why it changes the price
Melrose has about 12,372 homes across 4.7 square miles of Middlesex County, and the median one was built in 1938. That makes it a largely pre-war city: clapboard and cedar shingle over old-growth framing, plaster walls on wood lath, and original single-glazed sash. 86% of the housing here went up before 1980 and 60% of the buildings are detached single-family homes.
That is not trivia. It decides which products go on the wall, how many hours the preparation takes, and whether the job is governed by the federal lead rule. An estimate for cabinet painting & refinishing that does not start from the age of the house is a guess with a number attached.
Cabinet Painting & Refinishing on a pre-war house
Original built-ins are not kitchen cabinets
Pre-war houses have butler pantries, built-in china cupboards and beaded-board dressers that are part of the architecture. They are refinished, not resprayed like a modern kitchen — different prep, different sequence, and the hardware and the glass come out first.
Lead on anything original
Painted built-ins in a house of this age are assumed to be lead-bearing. That rules out open sanding in the room and means containment and HEPA extraction, which is why a pre-war built-in costs more to refinish than a 2005 kitchen.
Doors that were never square
A hundred-year-old cabinet door has moved, and it will not close the way a new one does. Part of the work is deciding what to correct and what to leave — over-correcting a house this old makes it look wrong.
Free on-site estimate in Melrose, with the prep itemized rather than assumed.
Lead paint in Melrose
Roughly 86% of Melrose's homes predate 1980, so on most jobs here the age of the house decides how the work runs before anything else does. Federal law treats housing built before 1978 as lead-bearing, and disturbing paint in one means contained prep, HEPA extraction and wet methods rather than dry scraping. It is slower and it is not optional. Ask any contractor bidding your job how they intend to handle it — the answer tells you a great deal.
What is included
- Kitchen cabinet doors, drawer fronts and boxes
- Bathroom vanities and linen cabinets
- Built-ins, bookcases and window seats
- Islands and pantry doors
- Interior of cabinet boxes on request
- Hardware removal, labeling and reinstallation
- New knobs and pulls installed
- Coordinated wall and trim color
How far Melrose is
Melrose is about 31.3 miles from Northborough — about an hour out, which is toward the edge of where we work. We come out here for full exteriors, whole-house interiors and carpentry that is worth a crew's week — not for a single bedroom, because the drive would cost you more than the painting. The estimate is still free, and if the job is too small to be worth your money we will say so on the phone.
Written, itemized, fixed price. Nothing discovered in week three.
The rest of what we do in Melrose
- Interior Painting in Melrose
- Exterior Painting in Melrose
- Light Carpentry & Wood Repair in Melrose
- Power Washing & Deck Staining in Melrose
Or see everything on the Melrose page, and the full cabinet painting & refinishing page for how we work generally.