Refinishing Cabinets

[10,000 Casts]

I have 30 year old oak cabinets with a golden oak stain in my kitchen. I'm going to refinish them with the exact same stain color. Should I just sand them down and restain and poly or should I take the extra step of stripping them?

Any advice is appreciated, Thanks!

[PurpleFloyd]

If you are interested, I have a business where I have been doing this exact thing for almost 2 decades. If you want some pointers( I am not looking for work)shoot me a PM and I can get you my phone number. If you have any pictures of the kitchen and the biggest problem areas that would help me tell you the best way to go.

[hydro]

Since there is 30 years of aging on the wood, there is likely a "patina" or color shift that has developed in the surface of the wood. Due to that I would not put sandpaper anywhere near them. Personally, I would strip the old finish, stain, and re-spray with poly. I'm no expert here but I have done this before. I also stay at Holiday Inn Express often so does that help???

Take Purple Floyd up on the offer of advice. It's always nice to have someone who knows what they are doing give you some coaching!

[Surface Tension]

It depends on what your trying to accomplish.

Since its in a kitchen first step is to degrease and clean. look at Formbys for Build-Up Remover.

This isn't going to remove any finish but will prep the cabinets for your next step whatever that may be.

If all you have is light scratches and minor dents you can they can be sanded out and then

Furniture Refinisher. Its a mess and it'll redistribute the stain to the small areas you sanded. If you go this route be sure to get the nooks and crannies good and excess cleaned out of them.

[PurpleFloyd]

In my professional opinion trying to strip the finish off of the cabinets is not worth the hassle and it can lead to bigger problems if you don't know what you are doing than it solves and if you are experienced with using strippers then you probably know how much time and effort it involves and how long it takes, how long the kitchen is out of commission and what the return on investment is. For kitchens especially it rarely is the best choice. If the hinges and drawers are bad and the hardware is dated then it may make sense to reface them. If you like the look of the cabinets and you want them to look better then I would do something like this:

Many times after you clean and degrease them like Frank said, you will find the finish degraded, especially around sinks and the handles to the point tht the stain is gone.

So you custom match the stain ( I use Water based stains for this and blend the color back in. After that you spray the entire door with a few new coats of waterbased clear coat so it looks like new.

This is a before picture of the kitchen. It generally looks dull but in fairly good shape. This is often misleading and you can see the black starting to show around the knob to the left of the window and looking closer you will see the finish has been worn through past the stain. This is where many people think you need to spend tons of hours and toxic products to strip them but that is not true.

Even areas like this where there was something splattered on the back of the peninsula before they put the poly on the cabinets can be fixed fairly easily with no stripping involved.

Once you are done, you can expect the cabinets to look like this and there is far less work involved in the process and you can expect another 15-20 years easily whan you are done.

[PurpleFloyd]

Here is a 30 year old Cherry kitchen that we restored last week.

[CAMAN]

Wow! That looks nice PF! Did you have to replace the doors or did you use the old ones?

[fishersofmen]

I used the Rustoleum Cabinet Restore kit on my kitchen this winter. The cabinets had been painted by the previous owners and it was an ugly color and poor work. I went with white and replaced all the hardware and counter tops. It was a ton of work but well worth it, my wife loves it too. Best part is it only cost me around $1,100 to do it. I will post a few pics later on.