Blog

Kansas City home builders didn’t limit their Golden Oak colors to kitchen cabinets during the 90s building boom. You’ll find the same yellow tones in floors, doors, woodwork, mantles and hand rails of most Kansas City homes of that vintage.

Of course, from the builder’s perspective it made sense. Every color change added to the cost. And the demand for housing was so crazy back then that the builders were scrambling just to keep up. And the buyers didn’t complain, if they thought of it at all. They were just happy to have a new home.

So we often get calls to fix the color of handrails too. Usually people think of the color of their handrails when they have their hardwood floors refinished. The yellow on the floors gets changed to a darker, richer color and the hand rails and balusters now look tired and worn.

We have some options to offer for handrails, depending on your budget. The hand rails in our former house looked like what you see to the right.

The balusters are white painted wood. The hand rails and newel posts are pine and stained the same yellow as the woodwork in the rest of the house.

 

 

 

 

 

We wanted metal balusters but when we calculated the cost we went looking for other options. Brenda decided to glaze them a black iron color. The results were fantastic. We were surprised at how much more open the house felt after this change. We realized that the mass of white spindles stood out and acted as a visual barrier. Because the white was gone, the black allowed us to “see through” the balusters and thus the open feel. Take a look at the before and after pictured here and you can see what I mean.

We also treated the hand rails and newel posts with a metallic plaster finish. This plaster dried to a rock-hard durability. The finished look was one of an iron rail and metal balusters.

This is the second post about our private saloon project. The previous post talked about the what we did to make the new tin ceiling appear to be naturally aged.

The second part of our project was to make the new sheet rock walls appear to be 100-year-old plaster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We began by painting a color on the walls that would show through any “holes” in the plaster. Brenda used her skill with the trowel to make the effect look natural, as if the plaster had aged and places had come loose.

 

The final step was to apply a glaze. The glaze gives the effect of the natural aging process you see in old plaster, especially an old saloon. Years of smoke combine with the natural color changes that occur in plaster over time. Our glaze accomplishes that look in a day. I’ve included a video of just one wall. The video condenses 4 hours of work into 3 minutes. The pace is sped up in the video, but when she does it for real it’s about as hectic. Once she starts she can’t stop until the wall is completely glazed.

Here’s another picture of the glazing process.

 

Glazing walls is hard work. Here is what it looked like when we finished the walls. You can see that the stark white is gone and the look of aged plaster is subtle in order to make a good background for the accessories that are coming.

 

 

 

 

The ceiling and the walls were what we were originally asked to do. But as you can see the new rough-cedar trim in the picture to the right looks nice and new. There were also large rough cedar beams with the same new look. Our clients asked if we could do something to make this new wood look as old as the walls and ceiling.

The next blog post in this series will talk about how we accomplished making this new wood look old.

This refinishing project was a big one.

We look at how big a kitchen cabinet refinish job is by the number of doors and drawers involved. A good sized kitchen will have a total of 50 doors and drawers. The biggest kitchen refinishing project we’ve had up until now was a 75 piece job. Of course that included the entertainment center and fireplace mantle.

The job we just completed is our biggest kitchen cabinet project yet. Well, we refinished the cabinets in the

 laundry room, powder room and master bathroom too. All told we had 75 door and 25 drawers: 100 pieces total.

The original finish on the kitchen cabinets look almost like a pickled finish, but not quite. There was a pinkish cast rather than the white you would expect with a pickled finish.  Of course, the finish was 20 years old and had probably changed color as it faded. Here’s a picture of the original finish on the kitchen cabinets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did an over-glaze refinish over the main kitchen cabinets. Some people think we are re-staining the cabinets, and indeed, it does appear that we just stained them to a dark color. But we don’t have to strip the finish, nor do we use wood stain. Stain, even the oft-used gel stain, isn’t made to stick to an existing cabinet finish. It will dry and appear to be fine, but there’s a good chance it will flake off after time.

The layers of glaze we use for refinishing cabinets is designed with binders so it sticks to your existing kitchen cabinets’ finish. Usually we can get a dark walnut finish with two layers of glaze. But these cabinets were so light to begin with that we had to use three layers to get the rich undertones we need to make this finish look rich and deep. We also had to take an extra step of adding a clear “barrier coat” between the second and third layer. Of course we finished it off with our clear Diamond Varithane satin finish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kitchen island got a different treatment. We cleaned and prepped it as usual. Then we primed, painted and over-glazed and topped it off with clear coat like the rest of the cabinets.

We also refinished the cabinets in the powder room. We went from a plain white to a solid black with a wax finish. The change brought out the richness in the granite top and vessel sink.

And we also refinished the  vanity cabinets of the master bathroom. They started out white and we painted them a gun-metal grey metallic and glazed over them with a black glaze. Of course we didn’t leave off the clear coat for a durable finish.

 

We went back to do another project for a client we refinished a kitchen for this summer. We also refinished the mantle on this fireplace in anticipation of this project.

 

 

The stone on this fireplace was a drab grey. It was a man made stone that looked like natural stone, but it just didn’t have any life to it. Brenda created a glaze and blended several colors together to give the stone some richness.

 

 

We often say as a joke that we can faux finish anything that stands still. We don’t often do a faux like this over such realistic “fake” stone. But we can really paint anything that stands still long enough.

Our clients purchased some farm land in Missouri that included an abandoned house and barn. Instead of tearing down the house they decided to restore it and keep true to the historical architecture and design. They did, however install an elevator and we finished the inside of it. That was the extend of our involvement with the house project.

But after living in the house for a few years our clients wanted a larger space for entertaining. The house was big enough, but the rooms were smaller than would fit all of their family. They decided to create a “saloon” in the corner of their barn.

The old barn had burned so they rebuilt it to look like the old one on the outside with modern conveniences, like water, heated floors and air conditioning, inside. They wanted to create an old west saloon that would look old but still function to entertain in this century.

Our initial task was to age the tin ceiling. The manufacturer of the old-time tin ceilings is still in business. So the tiles they purchased were just like the ones out of the 1800s buildings. But they were shiny and new.

 

 

 

 

 

We created a faux rust look using glaze brushed on the tiles. The metal was untreated so we had to put a coating on so that it wouldn’t rust for real. We usually use water based clear coats in our cabinet and furniture finishes. But the water based clear had a chance of letting rust form down the road.  We ruled out an oil clear coat. Oil products yellow with age and that wouldn’t be good either. We settled on shellac. It stays clear and doesn’t have as much fumes as lacquer when it’s sprayed on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our part in this project grew as we progressed. My next post will show what we did to the walls.