I am back to work on our home. I mentioned before that I wanted to fix our cabinets. Here is a picture of why. They are stained darkly and they have wear marks where you open them. When I took this picture I noticed that I am also missing a piece of the upper layer of the wood in the corner.
I have 25 doors and 9 drawers. It is going to take a long time. Ken and I thought about what to do to fix this problem for nearly a year. I took one of the doors and stripped it with chemicals. That removed the outer varnish but not the stain. I bought a finish sander with a bottom that resembles a clothes iron. I sanded the one door that I stripped with 60 grit sand paper.
This is what it looks like now (in the pictures it looks darker than in real life. When sanded it looks much lighter than the stained doors. To get another door to this state it would take about 1 hour worth of my time. I am debating how to proceed. I NEED YOUR IMPUT! Even if you do not ever respond to my blog I need your thoughts and experience if you have any... PLEASE!
My problem is that when I sanded it did not get all the way into the crevices where the raised ridge is. I could get ahold of a Dremel type sanding tool and work on it to make the stain completely gone. I could sand some more with the 120 & 240 grit sand paper and get as well as I can into the crevices but leave some there. With both of these options I would then varnish with a clear varnish letting the light wood show though. The other option I have is to sand and paint the cabinets white. We are obviously going to get new knobs and do something about the gold hinges since the new knobs will be brushed nickel. If we paint the cabinets white we are also going to force ourselves to redo the cream colored counter tops and sink. We want to do that anyway but with the paint it is going to look like crap in the mean time.
Has anyone done this type of thing before? Do you know anyone that has? I need advice badly. If I end up painting do I need to sand with the finer grits of paper? How fine do you go? Anyone have thoughts on varnish? One coat? Two? More?
The last thing to mention is that we may not live in this house forever. It is too small and if the market were better we would consider selling now. I need the kitchen to look neutral enough for a buyer. That is why I worry about leaving a little stain in the crevice. Maybe someone else might not like the antique look.
Thanks in advance. :)
3 comments:
Paint them white & put on the brushed nickel knobs & hinges. I would then do a grey countertop. I saw where you can buy granite that is a countertop shell that goes over your existing countertop. Much cheaper! If you can't afford that, I would do a grey granite looking formica and a grey speckled floor. Either a white ceramic sink or stainless steel. White and grey will hide a lot of dirt on the counter & floor, still look very neutral, & looks great with stainless steel appliances which you want to eventually have if selling.
Plan on it being a horrible mess that takes twice as long. If I had to redo mine again, I would look into buying new white doors one at a time and painting everything else.
I second Julies opinion.
Paint paint paint.... when we re-stained Austins dresser(much easer than a kitchen) it was horrid!!!!! In our old house we re-painted the cabinets a nice light cream and it made sich an improvement. Good luck on the kitchen
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