“With their home equity lines of credit lines exhausted and home values shriveling, Americans have cut way back on the big-ticket projects such as remodeling kitchens and bathrooms that used to ring up hefty sales for Lowe's and Home Depot.”-  Business Week May, 08.

Business Week, feeling sorry for Lowe's and Home Depot for their low sales figures in this tight economy, makes that statement because it has been a wasteful tradition of American homeowners to replace fixtures instead of refinishing them. Instead of being resurfaced, structurally sound fixtures like kitchen countertops, bathtubs, and kitchen-cabinets, kitchen appliances with slight dents, cracks or worn colors are simply replaced. The fixtures add to the landfills as more trees get cut down for more cabinets. And the cycle continues.

Today though, as the economy continues to tighten with high gas and food prices, many informed and creative homeowners are enjoying great savings in money, time and the environment that refinishing provides when remodeling their kitchen and bathrooms.

Here are the bare facts about replacement

Anytime that you replace a bathtub or kitchen countertop, it very often requires full demolition of the areas surrounding the fixture. That means repairing walls, removing and replacing plumbing and upgrading floors. In the case of bathroom, when you add new surround and tiles, the money and time adds up pretty quickly. Your small project begins to look like a big one. Unfortunately, more trees get cut down for cabinets and the landfills accept other unwanted fixtures.

Why Refinishing is Better than Replacing

 

Comparing bathtub refinishing to bathtub replacement

 

 

Here are the benefits of refinishing.

Here are fixture that we repair and refinish: