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Sanding, Staining, and Varathane

In my last post, I showed you how I stripped my cabinets.  Once they were stripped of varathane and stain, they were ready for sanding.  My only tip for sanding is to sand more than you think you need to.  I made the mistake, when I refinished my kitchen table, of not sanding enough.  When you think you’ve done a great job sanding, keep going.  Or, if you are lucky enough to have a great husband (like me), ask him to check your work.  Then, he’ll take it upon himself to make the cabinets perfect.

Now, THIS is my favorite part.  It is so much fun to see beautiful, dark stain going onto the cabinets.  I wear rubber gloves.  It’s super messy.  Don’t forget to stir the stain.  When I did my upper bank of cabinets, I didn’t stir the stain well enough, leaving the cabinets a little lighter than they should have been.  I ended up taking them down and starting the whole process over, just because I knew it would drive me crazy.  Read the directions on the can of stain.  With my stain, I had to stain, wait, wipe, wait, stain, wait, wipe, wait.  Like I have said before, It’s not difficult to restain cabinets.  It’s just time consuming, with all of waiting.

Once the cabinets are all stained and have had plenty of time to dry, it’s time to varathane.  The varathane really brightens up the cabinets.  You can see, in the picture below, that I have not put varathane on the two doors at the bottom of the picture yet.  They just look like dull brown cabinets.  The varathane really makes a big difference.  I put a coat of varathane on with cheap disposable brushes.  Again, this step takes time.  You paint on the varathane and wait.  I have always waited longer than the can tells me to.  Then you sand, which makes it look really ugly and you will think you’ve ruined all of your hard work.  Finally, you put on one last coat of varathane.  You will look at all of your hard work and say, “Whewww! Done.”  Then you’ll remember that you have only done the FRONT of the cabinets.  Once they are completely dry, flip them over and do the whole thing again.  I like to do all of this on cardboard or a drop cloth.  Newspaper is too thin and it sticks to the cabinets.

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The Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2012

    hello what color of stain did you used?