Refinishing Our Kitchen Cabinets - Day 1

We have decided to start another remodeling project. Yay! I think. Every time we start one of these projects we end up working very hard for months and months on end. The good thing is that every time we start a new project, we learn new skills. With the 1/2 bath we learned how to lay tile, move in-wall plumbing, reinstall a toilet, fix drywall, and apply one kind of texturing. (We already knew how to prime and paint.) With the master bath we learned how to install wall tiles, lay concrete, install a closet, and apply a different kind of texturing. This time around, we chose to learn how to refinish wood cabinetry, which has proven to take more patience and attention to detail than any of our other projects.

To make sure that I could actually do this before we started the whole kitchen, I took down one door that is rarely opened and stripped, stained, and finished just the back. The logic was, if I couldn't manage it, I could strip it again and stain it to match the original without too much trouble. It worked, so we decided to give it a try.

So, here we go.

As always, we need to have a starting image. This is the state of our kitchen as it has always been. For 30 years. We never liked pretty much any of it, but always thought that it would be extremely difficult and expensive to update. Well, it will be difficult, but it is not going to be as expensive as we thought. So long as we do it ourselves.

Day 1 - Before anything.


This is what the back of the doors look like to begin with. Notice that the installers placed the hardware on the unfinished doors before spraying on the varnish. Lazy. So many issues with our kitchen that can be directly related to the original manufacture or the homeowners that directly preceded us. We're not fans of either of them. Also notice the color. That sort of amber, high gloss finish we really don't like. The whole design of the kitchen is very dated.


So this is stage one. The stripper. It is incredibly toxic stuff that burns a lot if you drop it on your toes. Don't worry, I didn't drop it on my toes. It was my leg. And my leg is fine. It works like a charm, though, and basically liquifies the entire surface of the cabinet - anything that isn't wood.


Once the stripper does its job, you scoop it off with a plastic palette and then give the whole thing a mineral spirits bath with a steel wool loofa.


So, we have no idea how this will turn out in the end, but we have no choice but to keep going now! Stay tuned.