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Kansas City Kitchen Cabinet Restyling and Refinishing.

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Refinishing Hand Railings

February 15, 2014 by Eric Deeter

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.Handrail before refinishing

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.Railing before and after 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.

Filed Under: Projects

New Cabinet Finish Debut at Home Show

February 11, 2014 by Eric Deeter

Cabinet refinishing samples in Home Show For three years we’ve told ourselves we need to retire our Home Show booth and start fresh. But we put all of our energy and focus into making sure our client’s have great looking cabinets. Sure, getting ready for the Home Show is at the back of our mind, but we always come to the point we have to take our ten-year-old booth out of storage and spiff it up for the show.

Of course, it’s our cabinet door finishes that are the star attraction. The walls of our booth are only the background.

But last year we hit a crisis. Our home renovation forced us to act. Our Home Show booth is stored in our lower level. We never considered his when we rebuilt our basement stairs and extended our living room floor.

We had only inches to spare as we contorted the center section or our booth up the stairs. After last year’s show I cut the booth in pieces and set it on the curb to be hauled away.

So this year we have a new booth as well as some new cabinet finishes.

One of the trends we see in kitchen cabinets is a sleeker glaze look when cabinets are painted. The old-world, dirty white finishes are out. The cabinets are still glazed and have dimension and character, but they are calmer finishes that call less attention to themselves. They don’t have to make a statement or stand out.

The result is that your kitchen decor becomes a background. This is good because it gives you the option to dress your kitchen up or down merely by changing some accessories.

Sample of our  new cabinet finishBesides updating our glazed doors we included a new finish we call “Patty’s Hutch.” We create this finish with specialty paints from two sources: Caromal Colours and Pure Earth Paint.

This new finish got a lot of attention at the Home Show. We also just completed a refinish of a built-in desk and cabinets. I’ll have before and afters and a story about that project coming up soon.

We have one more show this year: the Johnson County Home and Garden show. If you are in Kansas City that weekend come by the show and see our new booth and finishes.

Filed Under: Trends and Style

Interior Design Challenge: Make New Wood Look Old

February 5, 2014 by Eric Deeter

“Can you make these new cedar beams look old?”, our client asked us. “The walls and ceilings turned out great, but all this new wood looks out of place.”

New beams and trim to refinish.“Of course we can,” we replied.

We knew that unfinished rough cedar is like a sponge: anything we put on it would soak in and we’d have little chance to blend it. Now most of our work for refinishing kitchen cabinets and other woodwork and trim we do over already finished wood. Of course we’ve done our share of working with raw wood. But rough cedar has it’s own set of challenges–it’s soft, rough, and grabs any liquid that comes near it.

So Brenda went to work researching the best way to give this woodwork a faux-aged look. She found several options to chemically speed the aging process.  Vinegar with steel wool looked as if it had possibilities. Baking soda was another option she looked at. In the end she decided to stick with the process we know best–using glaze. The samples looked good and we got the colors we wanted.

Distressing wood beams and trimBut the first order of business was to distress the wood. Brenda spent most of a day with a knife and a rasp adding some “wear and tear” to the wood.

 

Aging new wood beams to look old.

The next step was to add the stain of age. Brenda excels at seeing a century of time pass in her imagination and applying the marks of age so they look natural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woodwork finish with faux age and distressThe final step was to finish all the woodwork with a medium stain. Again, we used a glaze so we could control how much pigment was absorbed by the wood. We knew a “factory” stain right out of the can would give us a blotchy mess. Also, we use water base glazes. Putting an oil stain over the “aging” glaze was a recipe for disaster.

 

 

 

The results are fantastic. The beams and woodwork now fit with the look of the rest of the saloon.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Projects

How to Remover Wallpaper Like a Pro

January 30, 2014 by Eric Deeter

 

Wallpaper removal graphic

If you mention “wallpaper removal” to most people, they usually make a face like they’ve smelled a week-old bag of forgotten gym clothes. A trip to the dentist seems more fun than facing e a roomful of old wallpaper that needs to come down. You want an easy answer, I’ll bet? You think the professional wallpaper strippers have some hidden secret that makes the paper fall off right at your feet? Sorry to burst your bubble. Stripping wallpaper is a lot of work, no matter how you slice it. But the method I give you here is the easiest and fastest way I’ve found to do a job that kind of sucks. Just a note: This isn’t the final word on wallpaper removal. You can find other methods, and hey, they may be better. But this method works for us.  The materials you will need are: a scoring tool, sometimes known as a Paper Tiger. This little dandy has wheels of sharp teeth  for perforating the surface of the wallpaper. A pump-up garden sprayer: the kind used for spraying weeds in the garden. (If you don’t have a sprayer you can use a sponge and a bucket of water.) Lots of towels or cloth drop-cloths to soak up excess water. 2 buckets (3 if you’re not using a sprayer). A putty knife 3” or 6” wide. Ivory dish washing soap. Fabric softener. Green Scotchbrite pads. A good-sized sponge (2 if you’re still without a sprayer).  2” masking tape: the cheap stuff that’s really sticky: don’t use blue painter’s tape. Large plastic trash bags, and a step ladder. Begin by testing a small piece of wallpaper. Use a putty knife to lift a seam and pull the paper away from the wall. If you get a large piece to come loose, leaving the backing still stuck to the wall, it is probably “strippable” wallpaper. Be grateful, because your day just got a whole lot easier. Strippable wallpaper is made so that the vinyl on the top will pull away in large sheets, leaving the backing to be relatively easy to wet down and remove. Score the wallpaper   If your test only gets you a small piece of wallpaper grab the Paper Tiger and get busy scoring the paper. Score it a lot. Go in circles. Then go up and down in the corners and along the trim. Go back and forth along the ceiling and baseboard.

Warning: This is is not the place to test how strong you are!
Use a light touch with the Paper Tiger. You only want to score the top of the wallpaper. You don’t want to go through the paper and cut up your wall board.

Don’t skimp on the scoring. If you could pick one or two square inches at random and find it scored, that’s about enough. Put down drop-cloths or towels next to the wall you want to start on. Take your 2″ masking tape and tape it to the wallpaper an inch above your baseboard. Make a “drip edge” so that water drips over the baseboard. You want to try to keep the water from running behind the baseboard. You don’t want your baseboard to get wet and curl like a potato chip. Fill the sprayer with hot water and add one cap of fabric softener per gallon of water. Do this in a bucket if you don’t have a sprayer. You can also use a chemical stripper such as DIF. If you use a chemical stripper you can add a tablespoon of fabric softener. It makes the water “wetter.” Wet down the wallpaper    Wet down 3 strips of wallpaper. A fine spray of water is better. And if you’re using a bucke tay on the wall as long as possible and soak into the perforations made by the Paper Tiger.t and sponge, don’t have the sponge dripping wet. You want the water on the wall, not the floor. You also want the water to s If you are a type-A personality, this part will be difficult, but now you wait for 5 minutes. Now would be a good time to fill the two buckets with warm water. In one bucket, squirt some Ivory dish washing soap. Get a green Scotchbrite pad and put in that bucket. Get your sponge and drop it in the second bucket. Use the sprayer or sponge and wet down the 3 strips of wallpaper again. Wait another 5 minutes. You may have to wet the wall more often if it starts to dry out too quickly, but keep it damp for at least 10 minutes before you try to take down any paper. Scrape the glue off   Starting at the top of the first sheet, take the putty knife and pry up a corner and pull. Most likely the top of the paper will pull free and leave the backing. The backing will likely still be mostly dry except where your Don’t start doing a happy dance once the paper and the backing are off the wall. You’re not done here yet. You’ve got glue still on the wall. Yes, you have to get it off. No, you can’t just paint over it. Wallpaper glue will crackle and stain your paint. Besides it dries into crunchy globs that will look terrible. Paper Tiger scored the top of the wallpaper, so wet this section down again and wait another 5 minutes. Now go to work to get all the pieces of the first sheet off the wall. It may come off in a full sheet or in pieces, but keep at it. Use more water as needed to keep the paper from drying out. Don’t forget to keep the next 2 strips of wallpaper wet as well. And you can go ahead and wet down the next 2 strips beyond them too. Wallpaper glue removeal If there is a lot of glue, scrape as much as possible off with a putty knife. (You can scrape the excess glue into a large yogurt container or wipe it on the just-removed sheet of wallpaper.) Now grab your bucket with the Scotchbrite and Ivory detergent and start at the top scrubbing down the wall. Wait! Do it gently. You want to scrub the glue off and not the top layer of sheet rock. Now, grab the sponge from the bucket of clear water and squeeze it out so it’s damp, Wipe back and forth down the wall you just scrubbed. You will probably want to rinse the sponge out halfway down the wall. Remembe r, you want to remove the glue not smear it around. Also, you will probably want to change water in your rinse bucket about every 4 of 5 strips, depending on how much glue is on the wall. Wallpaper glue removal Put the paper in a trash bag and grab the sprayer. Wet down the 4 strips again and start removing the next one in line. As you work around the room, keep wetting strips ahead so that they soak for about 15 minutes before you start removing them. Wallpaper manufacturers use various formulas for their glue. If it appears that fabric softener isn’t working well, you can try using Ivory dishwashing soap instead. Don’t, however, use both of them at once in your sprayer. They just don’t have the right chemistry to be compatible together. If neither one of the Well, there you have it. It still is hard work to get that darned stuff off the wall, but I’ve always been told that such things build character and help develop patience.

Now you aren’t planning on putting wallpaper back up on those walls are you?

 

Footnote:

I wrote this with the assumption that the walls were properly sized before the paper was installed. Sadly, some paper hangers were too lazy or ignorant to do the job right and installed the wallpaper right on raw sheet rock. There’s no way to remove the paper, in this case, without damaging the drywall.

If you find yourself with wallpaper installed over un-sized sheet rock, the above-described method is still the best way to get the wallpaper off. Just use the least amount of water you can to still do the job. There is a product made by Zinsser called Gardz. It’s a watery, clear sealer that will seal the damaged paper of your drywall back down so you can skim it with drywall mud and get back to a smooth wall.

Filed Under: DIY Tips

Interior Design Challenge: Saloon Project – Aged Plaster Walls

December 27, 2013 by Eric Deeter

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.

MorningStar Studio new sheetrock walls
The brand new sheet rock walls

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.

MorningStar Studio aged plasterh walls in process
Brenda applying the plaster

 

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.

MorningStar Studio wall glazing
Glazing the walls

 

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.

 

MorningStar Studio glazed wall comleted
The walls are done

 

 

 

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.

Filed Under: Projects

The Biggest Kitchen Refinish Job We’ve Done

December 22, 2013 by Eric Deeter

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.

Kitchen cabinet finish before we started.

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.

 

Before and after of kitchen cabinet refinish

Kitchen cabinets refinishing before and after

 

 

Kitchen cabinet refinish another before and after

 

 

Kitchen cabinet refinish with island before and after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Island cabinet refinish

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.

Refinishing on vanity in powder room

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.

Vanity cabinet refinish before and after

Filed Under: Projects

New Life for a Drab Stone Fireplace

December 20, 2013 by Eric Deeter

Faux highligts on stone fireplace

 

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.

 

Refinish on fireplace

 

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.

 

Faux finish on stone

 

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.

Filed Under: Projects

Interior Design Challenge – Private Saloon Project

December 18, 2013 by Eric Deeter

Historical farmhouse picture

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.

Tin ceiling before the faux finish.

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.

 

 

 

Closeup of tin ceiling before faux finish

 

 

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.

 

Faux finished ceiling tile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Filed Under: Projects

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