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Whitewash kitchen cabinets, Mark Kitchen Cabinet Door Location, DIY books, Bag Balm |
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Whitewash kitchen cabinetsQuestion..... Anything you can tell me. I have oak cabinets, 15 years old. I would like to have a whitewashed finish. Can you give me all the steps in getting there?Mark the Location of each Kitchen Cabinet DoorReply..... First of all you'll need to mark the location of each kitchen cabinet door on the door. You can scratch a number on the top edge of an upper door or the bottom edge of a lower door, where it won't be seen in normal use, but won't be obliterated while stripping, then make a diagram on a piece of paper with the numbers in the correct position. Even though doors may be the same size they won't be interchangeable because of hinge positions.Remove all of the hardware.Remove all the hardware and clean the old finish thoroughly with a heavy duty cleaner, such as Prelude Furniture Cleaner. Even the lightest of cooking film that you can't see has a way of slithering around and back onto the wood after you think it's all stripped.Strip the old finish offNext strip the old finish off. Since a lot of the work will be inside I'd suggest a user friendly stripper like Citristrip. It smells like oranges too. Use a plastic scraper to remove the stripper residue. You can find a lot more stripping and refinishing information on our web site Use the links for kitchen cabinets, basic information and any other links that look like they'd be useful. Try the site search engine too.Use a medium bristle brush, not stiff enough to scratch, but stiff enough to get everything out of the pores because part of the effect is the white in the pores. A good brush should be available in the broom and mop section of the supermarket. Wear eye protection and use lots of covering to protect the surrounding counters and floor, because the brush could flip little flecks around. The stripper may be user friendly, but it isn't eye friendly. Be sure that all of the old finish and stripping residue is off. Rub the surfaces down with 00 steel wool and you're ready for staining. There are methods using paint, but unless you're experienced at it, it's better to use a more sure fire method. You'll need white stain. Apply the stain with a brush, cloth or roller and let it penetrate for as long as the can label recommends, be sure to work it well into the pores, then wipe the excess and let it dry. This is one of the rare times that I'll suggest polyurethane, but it does work well on kitchen cupboards. There's a good polyacrylic that would give a good lasting finish. Give the hardware a good cleaning while you've got it off, then take your diagram and re-install the doors and you're good for another 15 years or more. Furniture Repair SecretAfter you've refinished a piece of furniture, repaired some dents and other blemishes you will probably be able to see where they are, because you know where they existed before. Don't point them out to other people.Most people won't notice an almost unnoticeable repair unless you point it out to them, then it stands out like a sore thumb. Do it yourself booksI've had several questions about ordering furniture how to books. There are books on just about every topic you can imagine, refinishing, finishing, staining, kitchen cabinet refacing, kitchen ideas and the list goes on and on.I haven't read the vast majority of the books, but most are written by knowledgeable people in the field. Some will agree with the information I give and some will (gasp) disagree with me. I got my knowledge from hands on experience and from reading books and any little tidbits I came across and talking to other people, then tried the procedures on my own to see what would work for me. Life is a learning experience and you need to learn something new every day. Working on furniture is a lot like computers, you have to follow an exact procedure to accomplish what you want to do, but there are several exact procedures that will end up with the same result. email question.....How do I order the books on refinishing and building furniture Reply..... Here is a list of books. If you click on a category link it will take you to other pages with pictures of books. The pictures are clickable links too and when you click on one of them they take you to a page for that book with a description and price of the book and a button to click to add the book to the shopping cart. If you're not interested in that particular book after you read the description just click your browser's back button and it'll take you back to the page of pictures to make a different book selection to look at. A little trick that I use when there's a long list of things to choose from and I know I'm going to want to come back to it several times is to right click on the link and choose to open in a new window, then when I'm through with that window I just close it and the list is sitting there waiting. It saves time not having to reload the list by using the back button each time. You can find some good plans for building furniture too. There are some fun kits that are good for a beginning woodworker and furniture person to learn about joints, then work up to plans for building furniture, then on to doing your own designing and building. Stains and modern day clear finishesWhen working with stains and modern day clear finishes check the can label to see how the product can be applied. If it can be applied by wiping with a rag or brushing, then you should be able to roll it on ok with one of the cheapy small throw away rollers or a paint pad. It's a lot easier and sometimes a lot less messy than brushing.Stripping GlovesEven with milder paint and finish strippers it's best to have your hands protected, because anything strong enough to remove paint is strong enough to dry the skin on your hands. Many people are allergic to latex and end up with red itchy hands after wearing latex gloves, so if you're allergic to them, stay away from latex. If you don't know if you're allergic go very carefully and check closely and frequently if you decide to try them.Another popular throw away type gloves are vinyl. The vinyl gloves will give pretty good protection for a while, but you should plan on changing them part way through the job, in fact maybe a few times. When the fingers of the vinyl gloves get soaked in the stronger chemical strippers they tend to stretch out several inches and the chemicals can leak through the pores of the material. Then there's nitrile. Nitrile is a type of rubber and is generally tolerated by those who are allergic to latex. Nitrile is resistant to many chemicals and is very strong. Lots of mechanics, who used to always have grungy grub hooks because of ground in dirty grease wear nitrile gloves and although their hands aren't pristine, they look a lot better. . Bag BalmBag Balm
, all those contentedly mooing cows can't be wrong. Actually Bag Balm is a real good product to use when you're stripping furniture. My wife used it for years and found that it kept her hands in better shape than most of the expensive lotions. Apply a liberal amount of Bag Balm to your hands and then put on some nitrile, vinyl or latex gloves and let the Bag Balm do it's work while you do yours and it will give added protection if a glove springs a leak.Bag balm is available at most places that sell cosmetics or veterinary supplies. It's all the same good stuff no matter where you buy it. We're proud to be an affiliate of Blick Art Materials |
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