We traveled a short drive from Kansas City to Leavenworth to help our clients by refinishing cabinets on their kitchen island that was showing signs of wear. They had ask their builder to do a distressed and glazed finish on the cabinets of their kitchen island. The builder had the painters spray the trim paint–an off-white color–and then gave the homeowners some sandpaper and said they could distress it however they wanted. When they finished the painters sprayed a clear gloss over it all.
After living with these cabinets for a few years they felt there was something not quite the way they had hoped for. They called us to see what we could do. Brenda looked at the distressing and pointed out that the areas that were sanded through were places that wouldn’t wear naturally. Usually old pieces of furniture show wear on the edges, not in the middle of the panel. When we work on refinishing cabinets we are careful to distress places that will look like natural wear. Brenda suggested one option we could take is that we distress more of the cabinets and then glaze them to push back some of the starkness of the white.
As we looked more closely at the places the existing finish had broken down we told them the way we work when refinishing cabinets is to start over with new primer and base coats. They agreed and they decided to go for a cleaner look and we decided to paint them and glaze them without any distress. Here is a picture of the before and after.
Part of our decision to start fresh is that the existing finish was an oil-based paint and clear coat. It had yellowed considerably in the five or so years and we knew it would continue to yellow as time went by. We prepped it and primed it with white shellac before using water based acrylic paint and glaze. Our topcoat is a water based poly floor finish. It works great when we’re refinishing cabinets and has proven to be ultra-durable.
Our clients are thrilled with the new look.