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January 18 2003

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January 18, 2003

Whitewash kitchen cabinets

Email question.....

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?

Reply.....

First of all you'll need to mark the location of each 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.

Next remove all of the hardware.

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.

Next 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. You may find it locally or it's available here and here. That sounds like a congressional meeting or something, but it's actually links to three different types of 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.

Quick tip

After you've refinished a piece of furniture and 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 books

I'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.....

When you click on the graphic with the alternating books on the right side of each page on our web site RefinishFurniture it will take you to a list of books

The page the link takes you to has a list of blue clickable links of book categories at the top and pictures of books toward the bottom of the page.

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.

Quick tip

When 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.

More faux leather

This will wrap up the faux leather series with some alternate procedures. I haven't tried these procedures, I've just read about them, so you'll need to do some experimenting to see how they'll work for you.

After preparation of the surface for the faux leather, paint on the base coat then take a wad of plastic wrap and press it down on the damp base coat, then rewad for a new surface and do the same again until you've covered the whole surface.

Now might be a good time to mention gloves. They'd be good to wear during a procedure like this, otherwise you could end up with paint up to your elbows. More about gloves farther on.

After you have a good crinkle pattern in the base coat take a dry brush, at least a three or four inch brush would be best and smooth out any ridges and lumpities. If you smooth out too much, take the plastic wrap wad with a painty part and smoosh it down where you need more paint. Keep wiping any paint from the brush so the bristles stay nice and dry to pick up any excess paint. After it's smoothed take a clean plastic wrap wad and gently go over the whole surface to add some definite veins.

Another method is to use kraft paper wads in the same manner as the plastic wrap.

A third method is to crumple a wad of kraft paper the same as if you were going to glue it down like in the original method, but with this one you paint the base coat on the surface you want faux leather, then flatten out and smooth the crumpled kraft paper over the base coat while it's still wet and then peel it off. Take a dry brush and brush the crinkle design base coat out to a satisfying appearance. If you get too much off take the painty kraft paper and add more paint back to the surface.

Let the base coat dry then apply the translucent glaze coats and final clear coat.

Stripping Gloves

Even 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.

This link to gloves will take you to nitrile and other disposable gloves.

Quick tip

Bag 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.

Paint, finishes and other stuff

French polish

French polish is a very old art. It isn't really a polish as we think of polish as in wax and polish, it's more of a finish or extension of a finish, except (it seems there always has to be an except) it is a polish in the sense that it's applied with a buffing and polishing action.

French polish is frequently used as the only finish on wood classical stringed instruments, because it can be completely controlled and made to sit on top of the wood and not soak in to change the resonance of the wood molecules. You can use french polish as a finish too, but it's fairly tender as a standalone finish and is easily damaged. The nice part is that it's easily repaired too.

French polish can be used over natural finishes like lacquer and oil, but isn't recommended on finishes like polyurethane, acrylic or latex, but give it a try if you'd like to, new discoveries would never be made without experimentation.

The main ingredient in french polish is shellac. We made a light covering, pun intended, of shellac in our newsletter Nov 9, 2002 and we'll cover some more at another time. Shellac is fascinating stuff, whether brushed, rubbed or sprayed on furniture, sprayed on your hair to keep it in place or used as a coating on your pills to make them slide down smoother.

French polishing can be very difficult to accomplish properly, so don't expect your first try to be perfect, it takes some practice and a lot of elbow action. Around the turn of the century into the newly arrived 1800's french polish was popular in Europe. In those days labor was cheap and the materials were, relatively speaking, expensive. The art came to the United States later, then as labor became more expensive, both there and here, the french polishing art died out, because it is so labor intensive. Many professional refinishers and even antique restorers don't know how to french polish, because it's so much easier to grab a brush and apply a brush on finish.

The materials you'll need for french polishing are:

Shellac - The main ingredient is shellac. The french polish purist would say that you have to start with bare wood and flake shellac, but we'll cover some fudging using pre-mixed shellac too. The true final french polishing should be done with flake shellac that you mix yourself though as it will dry quicker and you can build many, many thin coats of french polish to give a great appearance of depth and shine. Pre-mixed shellac has a shelf life, generally not more than about a year and as it gets older will dry slower. Shellac flakes are available here, they aren't a commonly found item in the local paint store.

Denatured alcohol - There are three different types of alcohol, ethanol or grain alcohol the headache inducing, hic-up causing drinking type; methanol or wood alcohol, the kind that can cause blindness and other dire things in small doses and death in not too much larger doses; Isopropanol or isopropyl alcohol is poisonous internally, but is used in lotions, cosmetics and other such things and makes you give big ahh's when it's rubbed on your back. Denatured alcohol is available anyplace that paint products are sold.

Denatured alcohol is ethanol with enough methanol in it to make it unfit and dangerous for drinking, but is ideal for dissolving shellac flakes.

Denatured alcohol is very flammable.

Oil - Oil is for lubrication to keep the pad from sticking, because wet shellac is very sticky stuff. Pure virgin olive oil is the recommended oil to use and is the least likely to cause any problems. Olive oil is available at the grocery store.

Pad - Pads are the preference of the padder, so you can find many different descriptions of pads. A very good one is from a piece of cotton t-shirt or similar material and a good healthy wad of gauze. Wad the gauze into a ball about the size of a walnut and put it inside the t-shirt material and fold the sides and corners up to make a nice handle. It helps to tie the handle with a piece of string to keep it all together. The pad is savable and reusable as long as it's kept sealed in a jar with a tight lid. If it gets left out and dries it should be thrown away though and a new pad made. The dried shellac can be softened with denatured alcohol, but one little bit of hardened shellac can mess up your french polish job and it isn't worth the chance.

There are a few more miscellaneous and sundry items that we'll cover next time and we'll get started with the actual fun, but we're rapidly running out of time and room today.