Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, Part 3: Cabinet Doors and the Big Reveal

At the same time I was working on all of the drawer boxes and new drawer fronts featured in the previous kitchen post, I was going through the same motions (staining, drying, staining again, drying, polyurethane, more drying, etc.) with the 10 cabinet doors, many of which are very large. As I finished pairs of those I helped Nick hold them in the door openings to measure for hinge placement, then he attached the hardware.

Attaching door side hinge

Below is a stock photo of the type of hinge we used for the cabinet doors. This kind was required for the inset door look we were going for because it attaches entirely inside of the cabinet, remaining completely hidden. The previous cabinet doors were overly with hinges on the exterior.

These hinges are actually two separate pieces: the part that attaches to the door itself then clips to the part screwed into the interior wall of the cabinet base. To remove the doors you can simply unclip instead of unscrewing either. The hinges are even adjustable: after installation you can use two adjustment screws to move the cabinet doors slightly up or down and left or right, to easily center them within the door frames.

Only three of the doors were able to be installed right away because this inset hinge type needed to be flush to the cabinet door opening. For the remaining seven we had to build out the interior space in order to attach the hinges correctly, and there were a variety of differences in the space and how best to go about attaching the cabinets so the process wasn't always the same. We know about this going in, so we allotted for it in our installation time. This was one of Nick's contributions and he did a great job. Two of the seven built-in hinge bases shown below.

The wood will be painted the same green as cabinet interior. 

Once all the measurements were taken and each hinge piece installed, we clipped the doors into place to see how they looked. Below is Nick clipping one of the two largest doors into the cabinet base. We did this part after the stain was finished but before the polyurethane was applied, just to see how it all looked. Then I varnished the doors two at a time, taking them down and moving them to my workstation in the garage. After two coats on the front and one on the back I'd return them, re-attaching the door-side hinge pieces and clipping them back into place. Each pair took about a day because of drying time.

We added hardware as we went along. After I finished varnishing a pair of doors during the day and returned them to the kitchen, Nick would attach the cabinet door handles in the evening. We used Ikea Lansa stainless steel cabinet door handles. Nick did a fantastic job at this as well.

It looks crooked in the photo, but it's straight!

And now the first internet look at how the cabinets turned out and what the kitchen looks like now: 

And the 'before' photo again

Notice that the lower cabinet to the left of the range still doesn't have a door. The drawer above it hasn't been replaced either. This is the next step in the remodel: putting in a dishwasher. That's an update we're really looking forward to having. It's been about 4 years for me but much longer for Nick, as not many apartments in New York City have them. After the holidays we're going to have an electrician look at the space because we need to have the range outlet moved a foot or two to the right and a new outlet and breaker installed for the dishwasher. We've decided on a smaller 18" wide size, which should still be more than enough room for us and also save space.

After the dishwasher installation we can continue the renovation with ordering a countertop, removing the existing white tile backsplash, and after the countertop is installed, putting in a new backsplash. We were waiting to decide on a countertop color until seeing the cabinets entirely finished, to be able to get a better feel for the space and what would look best. All along I've been saying black would look best and after seeing how it turned out, Nick now agrees. As of right now the backsplash plan is stainless steel, but that could change if we find something we like better.

By the way, the photo below is nearly all of the garbage we generated during the remodel so far. Keeping all of the original cabinet bases made a huge difference. Instead of those going to the landfill, the only waste generated in order to reuse them were two small cans of paint stripper and newspapers used for collecting the paint/stripper remnants. I gave away all of the original cabinet doors and hardware by listing them on Craigslist's Free section, so those were reused by someone else. Add a few more sanding disks to the pile of wood below and that's about all of the trash created so far. Of course removing the countertop and backsplash will add to that considerably, because those can't really be re-used, but it's still not bad for such a significant kitchen makeover.

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.