Paint or stain kitchen cabinets?

My cabinets are stained with a very dark stain. I would like to lighten them up or paint them. What's involved in prepping them for both applications?

Thanks!

Reply to
sidekick86
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paint just sand prime and paint.

lightening stain will be a bad job, its not worth the effort.

Reply to
hallerb

Years of grease and oils from your hands will make paint not adhere, stripping is usualy needed, it might be cheaper to replace them

Reply to
ransley

Just for the sake of conversation, how many doors and drawers are involved? Cabinets are all solid wood, no printed wood grain? Plain doors or molding?

For either chore, you would need to take down doors and remove all hardware. Painting over a dark color, whether paint or stain, will probably take a minimum of three coats of paint. Primer not needed unless there is bare wood. All surfaces need to be absolutely immaculate - no dust or grease? I'e done both chores = stripped all of the cabs in a small kitchen that were dark, dark, stained oak. Only problem was when I did the end panels and found out they were not wood, but printed grain on particle board.

Stripping is a major, messy chore. At least two appl. of paint remover, scrape, scrub with steel wool, and final clean-up with steel wool and mineral spirits. Stripping will lighten the wood considerably, because it takes out a good deal of the stain, but not all of it. When I stripped the oak kitchen, I put a clear finish on the clean wood and it was gorgeous, a medium brown. You really can't make oak light.

Reply to
Norminn

You do have another choice. Using wood sheet veneer too resurface cabinets, you can get a lighter finish.

Nice finish and not as messy as strip and paint...

Google: wood sheet veneer Oren

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Reply to
Oren

Not very practical unless the doors and drawer fronts are plain/flat.

But you can certainly replace the doors and drawer fronts and use veneer on the cabinet frames. There's an entire industry devoted to cabinet refacing in this manner.

Refacing involves significant expense but refinishing involves a great deal of labor. Either way, it's generally not worth it unless you're sure the existing cabinets are solid and sound.

Reply to
Malcolm Hoar

I priced new drawer fronts once, it cost way more than new nice but low end cabinets OP should at least price them by taking sketch of existing space to lowes. its fast free and they give you prices

Reply to
hallerb

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