--- title: "Cabinet Repair, Refacing and Replacement in West Covina" description: "Cabinet doors, boxes, hardware and custom builds repaired or replaced in coaches, trailers, vans and conversions." canonical: https://ocrv.xyz/services/interior-remodeling/cabinet-repair-refacing-replacement/ business: "OCRV Center" phone: "(949) 799-3387" address: "23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887" market_served: "West Covina, California" --- # Cabinet Repair, Refacing and Replacement in West Covina RV cabinets fail at the vinyl skin, the hinges and the joints long before the boxes give out, which is why refacing is often the better value than replacement. OCRV Center repairs, refaces and custom builds cabinetry in shop in Yorba Linda for West Covina owners. **Ballpark range.** $500 to $7,500. Ranges are planning figures, not a quote. Final numbers come from a written estimate on your vehicle. ## How RV cabinets are built and why they fail where they do Most factory RV cabinetry is a lightweight box, frequently thin plywood or particleboard, with a face frame and doors that are either solid wood, a wood frame with a panel insert, or a substrate with a printed vinyl skin applied over it. Weight is the driving design constraint, so material thicknesses are minimal and the assembly is optimized for production speed. The failure points follow from that. Vinyl skinned doors delaminate at the edges first, because heat cycling in a closed vehicle softens the adhesive and the skin shrinks slightly with age. Once an edge lifts, humidity gets to the substrate and the door swells. Particleboard boxes fail where they get wet, which means under sinks and in the bathroom vanity. And screws pull out of thin material at the mounting points where road vibration works them loose. What usually does not fail is the geometry. The boxes are still square, still mounted where they belong, and still the right size for the space. That is the entire argument for refacing: you are replacing what wore out and keeping what is still doing its job. ## Refacing or rebuilding: what changes and what stays Refacing replaces the doors, the drawer fronts, the face frame covering and the hardware, while keeping the existing boxes in place. Because the boxes stay, the plumbing, the wiring and the counters above them do not have to be disturbed, and the job takes a fraction of the time a rebuild does. Done well, the result is indistinguishable from new cabinetry from anywhere you would normally look at it. Rebuilding is the right call when the boxes themselves are compromised. Water swollen particleboard under a sink, a box that has separated at the joints, a cabinet that has pulled away from a wall because the wall behind it is damaged, or a layout change that needs different box dimensions all point to replacement. There is a middle path that we use frequently: replace the boxes in the wet areas, meaning under the galley sink and in the bathroom, and reface everything else. Wet area boxes get rebuilt in marine grade or exterior grade plywood rather than particleboard so the next leak does not destroy them, and the rest of the coach gets new fronts. That combination gets most of the benefit for a lot less than a full rebuild. - Reface: boxes sound, doors and hardware worn, no layout change needed - Rebuild wet areas only: galley sink base and bathroom vanity in plywood, reface the rest - Full replacement: box failure, layout change, or a conversion being built from scratch ## Doors, hinges, latches and the hardware that actually breaks Hardware is where RV cabinetry differs most from residential. A kitchen cabinet at home never gets driven over a rough section of road with a loaded drawer inside it. Positive latching catches are not a nicety in an RV, they are the difference between a tidy galley and everything on the floor after one hard stop. Hinge failure is usually a substrate problem rather than a hinge problem. The screws strip out of thin door edges, and reinstalling the same screw in the same hole lasts about a week. The correct repair is to fill and re drill the hole with material that will hold, or to move to a hinge with a different mounting pattern that lands in fresh material. On doors that have been repaired repeatedly, replacing the door is cheaper than chasing the hinges. Drawer slides get replaced with units rated for the load and for the motion. Bottom mount slides common in RVs are inexpensive and adequate for light drawers but tend to drop and bind once the drawer is loaded. Side mount ball bearing slides with a positive detent cost more, hold alignment far better, and are worth it on galley drawers and anything carrying tools. ## Custom cabinet builds for conversions and layout changes Van conversions, skoolies and layout changes need cabinetry built to fit rather than bought off a shelf. Curved walls, wheel well intrusions, sloped ceilings and irregular floor plans all mean templating and building in place rather than installing modular boxes. We build these in plywood rather than particleboard, which adds a little weight and a lot of life, and we design them around how the space actually gets used. Deep upper cabinets look generous and become storage nobody can reach. Shallow cabinets with organized dividers hold more usable capacity in less depth. Drawers beat doors for anything below waist height because you can see what is in the back. Mounting matters as much as the box. Cabinetry in a vehicle has to be tied into structure, not just into a wall panel, because a loaded upper cabinet attached to thin luan will eventually come off the wall. We locate framing, mount to it, and add backing where the framing does not fall where the cabinet needs it. In conversions we install the backing during the wall build for exactly this reason. ## Finishes that survive sun, heat and daily use Cabinet finish in an RV has a harder life than in a house. Sun through a window falls on the same cabinet face for hours a day, and ultraviolet fades wood tones and yellows some clear finishes. Heat cycling flexes the substrate. And everything is within arm's reach, so surfaces collect handling marks that would never accumulate on a kitchen island. Painted finishes in a satin or matte sheen hide handling better than gloss, and they can be touched up locally, which matters over a long ownership. Stained and clear coated wood looks warmer and repairs less easily, since a spot repair on a stained finish rarely disappears. Vinyl and thermofoil wrapped doors are what the factory used and they are the ones that delaminate, so we generally do not put them back. Whichever finish you choose, the edges are what matters. Doors and drawer fronts get finished on all faces and all edges, including the back and the top edge nobody sees, because unsealed edges absorb humidity and swell. That single detail is the difference between cabinetry that still looks right in eight years and cabinetry that starts curling in two. ## Frequently asked questions ### The vinyl is peeling off my cabinet doors. Can they be repaired? Occasionally a small lifted edge can be re adhered, but it usually comes back, because the adhesive failed from heat cycling and that condition has not changed. On a coach where several doors are peeling, replacing the door fronts is the better spend. That is exactly what refacing is: new doors, drawer fronts and hardware on the existing boxes, without disturbing the counters, plumbing or wiring. ### Is refacing cabinets cheaper than replacing them in an RV? Substantially, in most cases. The boxes are usually still square, still mounted correctly and still the right size, so replacing them buys nothing. Refacing swaps what actually wore out. Replacement makes sense when the boxes are water damaged, when they have separated at the joints, or when you are changing the layout and need different dimensions. We look at the boxes before recommending either path. ### My cabinet doors keep swinging open while I drive. What is the fix? Positive latching catches, and often new hinge mounting. Friction catches and magnetic catches lose their grip and will not hold against a hard stop. We install catches designed for vehicle motion, and if the hinge screws have stripped out of the door edge we fill and re drill into material that will hold rather than reinstalling into a worn hole. Doors repaired repeatedly are usually cheaper to replace. ### Can you build cabinets to fit the curved wall in my van conversion? Yes. Conversion cabinetry gets templated and built to the actual space rather than installed as modular boxes, which is the only approach that works with curved walls, wheel well intrusions and sloped ceilings. We build in plywood, mount into structure rather than into wall panel, and add backing where framing does not fall where the cabinet needs it. ### What is under the sink cabinet made of and why did it fall apart? Usually particleboard, which is light and inexpensive and turns to mush the moment it gets wet. A slow supply line drip or a failed sink seal is all it takes. When we rebuild a galley or vanity base, we use exterior or marine grade plywood and seal the edges, so the next leak is an inconvenience rather than a rebuild. The leak itself gets found and fixed too. --- OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. Phone (949) 799-3387. All work is performed in shop at the Yorba Linda facility. We do not run mobile, roadside or fleet route service. Ranges are planning figures, not a quote. Final numbers come from a written estimate on your vehicle.