Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, Part 2: Cabinet Interiors & Drawers

I didn't take photos of the cabinet staining process because it was pretty boring photo-wise: I brushed several coats of Minwax 'Jacobean' stain over all of the areas that I had stripped the paint from the previous week, then after both coats were dry I brushed a layer of polyurethane over it. Once done I started painting the rest of the cabinet interiors with a Benjamin Moore color called 'Spanish Olive.' 

I painted an entire section of cabinet at a time, shelf by shelf. It took about a day to do each whole section, including the drying time of two coats. Also each day I had to re-shelve the stuff I'd taken down the previous day in order to paint that area and then remove everything from the next section. 

You can see below the new stain finish and the new green interior compared to the old white interior:

Taking a break from my second section of interior cabinet painting

Lower cabinet interior drying

We are incredibly happy with how the green and the dark stain look together and how both look with the newly tiled floor! Now to replace those old doors and drawer fronts. You've seen some photos of the kitchen cabinets before, so here's a shot of the old drawers from before. Even before I stained the frame around the drawers shown. The tiles weren't even set yet either, just laid out along the cabinets to get a look at what they'd be like: 

Photo doesn't accurately represent how ugly these were

We researched cabinet doors for a while before finding the right ones. Both of us dislike the look of raised-panel, so we were looking exclusively for slab style. One evening while browsing manufacturers we found exactly what we wanted at a place called Barker Door. When we saw that it was a local place in Tualatin, Oregon, Nick went to the showroom to check out the quality and what the slab doors looked like in person. That they were available unfinished sealed the deal, since we could then stain them with the exact stain as the bases instead of trying to match it to the options available by companies that only offer a pre-stained door selection.

Unfortunately they don't allow product pick up from their facility, so we had to wait for them to be delivered. But that only took one day since we are so close. We ordered the doors on November 7th and they arrived on the doorstep on November 21st. Not bad at all.

Photo below shows a couple doors with a first coat and the rest of the drawer fronts unfinished as they arrived via Fed Ex Ground, ready for staining right out of the boxes. I got to work right away.

Unfinished doors

And first coat complete.

First coat of stain drying

The drawers were basically a project all by themselves, which is why the rest of this post is about them.

Between applying coats of stain on both the front and back of the new drawer faces and the seemingly endless hours of each coat drying, I got to do some 'demolition,' by which I mean remove the rest of the ugly old drawer fronts and get the entire box to their final, finished state. I positioned the chisel and hammered along the drawer front edges both inside and out, rotating the entire thing as I went. I knew this would work and we'd end up with a clean removal and solid box because I'd removed the front of one of the three large drawers before we ordered the replacements.

My tools for this: chisel and mallet

After pulling out the nails used to attach the old front, I ended up with this below. I filled any nail holes with spackle, sanded after that hardened, and made sure those edges were level so the new front could sit upon on the base with no gaps.

Early green on what was the 'test' drawer front

All that was left for this drawer was two coats of the Spanish Olive paint. Between coats I would work on the other 4 drawers, which were in various stages of demolition and reconstruction. For example, while this final coat below was drying, I had spackle drying to fill the nail holes of another drawer, and would start removing the front of the next. The kitchen was a mess during this project because everything in these drawers were in bags on the floor or scattered around the counter top.

One done, four to go

I did all of this on the weekdays leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday break, when Nick was able to join in with the fun over his four day weekend. The drawer boxes were done, and it took the two of us to hold the newly-stained replacement fronts up to see how they'd fit best on those bases. Nick measured and marked and measured again and carefully attached the drawer faces to the boxes using thin finishing nails:

After the nail was in so far that the hammer was nearly hitting the wood, he switched to hammering using a screw in between. This also allowed him to continue pushing the nail into the wood enough that I would be able to cover it with wood filler. 

Finishing the drawers took another two days. Once the wood filler was dry I lightly sanded it smooth and dabbed stain over the area after wiping it down. After another full coat of stain dried on top of that, I applied the polyurethane: two coats on the outside and one on the inside face of the drawer. All coats needed to dry and then they were ready to come back inside, since I did all of this in the garage to prevent the smell in the house. 

Nick still needed to re-attach the drawers to the runners, which took some straightening of slanted runners and choosing more secure attachment points on the bottom. 

We're incredibly happy with how the drawers turned out once installed, as seen below before their pulls have been attached, though you can see what hardware we've selected on the cabinet doors to the right. You'll see the finished drawers inside and out on the Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing Finale I'll post later this week.