Kitchen Cabinets
Do It Yourself Furniture Refinishing

Refinish Kitchen Cabinets, Reface Kitchen Cupboards, Repaint Kitchen Cabinets

There are many ways to rejuvenate your kitchen cupboards. Some ways are very inexpensive and some will cost more depending on the tools you have, but even the most expensive (buying the necessary tools) will cost a fraction of the cost of new cabinets and you have the benefit of some new tools for other projects.

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Cabinet Doors

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Prepare Your Kitchen Cabinets

Kitchen Cabinet
Moldings

Kitchen Cabinet
Refacing

It makes life and a kitchen cupboard job a lot easier to make all preparations first. Some sawhorses are a must. You can make them real easy. Use sawhorse brackets, a pair for each sawhorse.

Each sawhorse will require four 2 x 4 legs, cut to a length comfortable for you, and a 2 x 4 cross piece, about two and a half or three feet long.

Looking at the brackets as a robot terrier, each leg is inserted up through the bottom of the jowl and the cross piece goes between the ears. There is a swivel point on the forehead, so the sawhorse can be folded and hung on the garage wall. There are holes to nail or screw the brackets to the 2 x 4s. I always used screws so a leg could be replaced as necessary. Two eight foot 2 x 4s set between two sawhorses will give ample work area to set up several kitchen cabinet doors at a time. Get the cheapest 2 x 4s that you can, they may be irregular, but they don't need to be pretty.

Mark the doors

Mark the doors in some manner, use a bit of masking tape with a number or something to identify which door goes to which opening. It can be a major hair tearing jigsaw puzzle trying to match doors to openings and screwholes if they aren't identified.

Remove the kitchen cupboard doors including the hinges from the cupboard fronts and lay them on your sawhorse work table and remove the rest of the hardware. While you have the hardware off, it's a good idea to clean it well with 0000 steel wool.

Unless the insides of the kitchen cabinet doors are in bad shape finish wise, they generally won't need to be redone since they don't get the wear or frequent scrubbings that the exteriors get.

If you're a husband, be sure to use lots of drop clothes and newspapers on countertops, on the floor and taped to adjacent walls. Besides the rewards for a job well done, you may get an extra hug for leaving the area clean.

If you're a wife, the preparation is definitely a benefit and will save time, but you'll probably have to clean up the final mess in either case.

Clean the Surfaces of Your Kitchen Cupboards

Before you scowl at me too hard, I know you keep your kitchen cabinets clean, but hygienically clean isn't always enough for redoing kitchen cupboards. No matter how well your kitchen is ventilated or how healthy your diet and cooking are, there is always a small amount of residue on the surface of your kitchen cupboards. If you like bacon and eggs for breakfast, a fried hamburger for lunch and a fried or broiled steak for dinner, then there is a bunch of residue. One little pin head of grease will cause a clear finish or paint to make a little crater with ridges and no matter how you coax the crater won't fill until the grease is gone.

Prelude Furniture Cleaner and Orange Oil are two of the best cleaners for removing the unseen greasy residue that can be harmful to a kitchen cabinet job. Besides doing a good job of cleaning, the Orange Oil gives a pleasant scent of a freshly peeled orange. It's always a good idea to try new chemicals in a small area first.

Repaint Kitchen Cupboards

If the old finish, either paint or clear finish is sound and attached firmly to the surface, use it as a base for painting, it will save hours of work building it up to the point where it is now and will generally give a smooth base surface.

One tried and true method for painting kitchen cabinets, after a thorough cleaning with TSP, use a deglosser such as liquid sandpaper. That should remove all traces of grease, but to be extra sure of a good, smooth surface, under coat with KILZ spray, or KILZ brush on. KILZ will cover crayon, lipstick, ball point pen or almost anything else that regular paint will stick its tongue out at and avoid like sin. After applying the KILZ, following label instructions, you're ready to apply the final coat.

Metal Kitchen Cabinets

The above methods work equally well on metal kitchen cupboards. In fact, you will save yourself a huge amount of frustration it you don't strip the old finish off of metal kitchen cabinets, but use several coats of primer, sanding between coats, on chips and scratches, until they are feathered and smooth with the surrounding area. Just use the primer where it's necessary, not over the whole area.

Other Kitchen Cupboard Finishes

Other methods of redoing your kitchen cupboards will be covered on separate pages which are in the making now, just as fast as eight fingers and two thumbs can get it done while taking care of a four year old granddaughter. I thought about a voice activated program, but then I thought about how my granddaughter stems from several generations of, to put it mildly, chatterboxes, I figured that there might be some confusing information conveyed. Then too, one of my nephews had a voice program and periodically, while he was concentrating on something else, his computer would talk to him or ask him questions or tell jokes. That makes you jump and look around when you're in a room by yourself.

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