How To Renovate Kitchen Cabinets: The Easy 3-Step Guide

The question of how to refinish kitchen cabinets cannot be simply answered in a short article, but I will do my best to provide you with all the basic information that will help you get started.

You’ll need to remove the old finish first, then prepare the surface by stripping and then sanding.

dismantling kitchen cabinets

You can strip old varnish with paint and varnish remover. Try Park’s Furniture Refinisher or whatever else suits your needs. Simply rub the wood with the restorer-soaked steel wool until you’re satisfied. Usually wipe until you get the color you want and then wipe it off. This process can be a bit tricky. Some people choose to remove the doors and make them outside the house.

This process can be quite time-consuming and while you can remove paint and varnish and even some of the varnish, sometimes it’s hard to get it all off with stripper. This is where sanding comes in.

sanding

Then you need to sand them down to bare wood. Just don’t start sanding until you’re sure all the paint has been removed. You can use an orbital sander to remove the rest of the paint. You can get an electric descent sander for a good price (around $70) from stores like Amazon. Do not use a disc sander unless you are doing a final sanding.

refinement

This is the last step on how to renovate kitchen cabinets. Once you get your cabinets satisfactorily light, you can restore them. You have several options here. You may choose to refinish your kitchen cabinets with a cherry stain and 2 coats of polyurethane or 1 coat of minwax. You can apply this with a foam brush.

You may need to do some light sanding between coats. You can sand with 400 grit and then, when you’ve coated, degloss the top coat with steel wool and a little wax. This of course applies if you choose to coat with glossy oil-based poly.