Almost every kitchen we are asked to look at could go either way on paper. New cabinets are the obvious answer if budget is unlimited. Refinishing is the obvious answer if it is not. The useful question is narrower than that: are the boxes worth keeping?
Start there, because everything else follows from it. Open a lower cabinet and press on the bottom panel. Look at the back corners under the sink for water staining or swelling. Check whether the face frames are still square and whether doors close flush without fighting the hinges. If the boxes are solid plywood or well-built particle board with no water damage, they are worth keeping — the cabinet industry has not fundamentally improved boxes in twenty years.
If you find swollen particle board under the sink, delaminating panels, or frames that have racked out of square, refinishing is putting good money after bad. Coating a failing box does not stop it failing.
The second question is layout. Refinishing changes color and finish; it does not move a wall, add an island or relocate the dishwasher. If your complaint about the kitchen is that the sink is in the wrong place or there is nowhere to stand while cooking, paint will not fix it and you should be pricing a remodel instead.
But if your complaint is that the cabinets are orange oak from 1994 and the kitchen feels dark, refinishing addresses the actual problem directly. A properly refinished kitchen — degreased, scuff-sanded, bonding-primed and finished in a cabinet-grade coating — reads as new to anyone standing in the room.
The part that separates a refinishing job that lasts from one that peels in eighteen months is entirely in the preparation. Kitchen cabinets carry years of cooking grease, and paint does not stick to grease. Every surface has to be degreased before it is sanded, then sanded to break the existing factory finish, then primed with a bonding primer built specifically for slick surfaces. Skipping any of those three is why people have bad experiences with painted cabinets.
We also take doors and drawer fronts off the boxes and finish them flat. A door finished lying down lays out smooth; a door finished hanging in place shows every drip and roller mark along the bottom rail. Labeling each door so it returns to its original opening matters too — cabinet doors are rarely as interchangeable as they look, and hinge holes drift by a millimeter or two over the years.
One last thing worth budgeting for: paint the cabinet interiors too. It costs relatively little on top of the job and it is the difference between a kitchen that looks refinished and one that looks like it was painted. Opening a bright new door onto a dark 1994 shelf undoes a lot of the effect.