Stained Glass Crow: Refinishing our Kitchen Cabinets

Back to the grindstone, less than 12 hours later.

Ok, so we are rounding the corner to the finish line! SOOOOOO CLOSE!!!

In the light of a new morning, the drawers still look too light, and too brown. (But every wood takes the stain a little differently, so I'm not too worried about it.

Second coat.

So, I completely forgot this little guy yesterday. It's the piece of moulding that goes at the top of the cabinet face where it meets the ceiling. Whoops!

Here you go, little guy.

And I forgot this as well. This is that integrated cutting board that I told you about. SPF stripped and sanded this as well, so it's ready to go.

The main area is easy enough. It even has a trough (finger grab? liquid collector?) to hold the stain. So, no worries here.

The trouble is that I only want to stain the edge that will be showing and not the actually cutting board area, which is for food prep. So I am trying to cut a really straight line with a sponge brush.

And I need to create a really clean line on the bottom as well, which means I have to see the underside of the drawer during staining. Yeah. Well, now I wish we had one of those low cart things that guys always use in the movies to work on their cars. That would be awesome. Cold, dirty concrete floor, not as awesome.

I really do want these to match the tonality of the doors (of course!) so when I started to remove the stain and saw that it was still very light,

I quickly reapplied and let it sit a little longer.

When I took it off the second time it was darker, but still not quite dark enough. I'm thinking a third coat today if the stain dries quickly enough.

So I did all the doors and the moulding. I didn't restain the cabinet face because it is already darker than the others and it wasn't quite dry. When I hit everything else with the third coat, I'll do the second coat on the cabinet face. Again, all the wood takes the stain differently.