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Kitchen Cabinet Refacing - Your Holiday Gift To Your Home
(part two of a kitchen renovation series) Page 2

by: Liz Roberts

Now that you’ve selected your veneer and bought the right tools, it’s time for the actual refacing process. It will take patience and a little skill. The results are cabinets that will be the jewels of your holiday kitchen. They will look like they’ve been professionally refinished, thanks to your time and effort.

The first and one of the most important things to first do is label your cabinet doors(otherwise you’ll have a jigsaw puzzle to deal with later on). Remove all doors and hinges using your ratchet screwdriver. Using this as opposed to using just a regular screwdriver makes removing screws much easier and speeds up the process. Remove the screws and put them in an unused ice cube tray or pill container. They won’t get lost on you and you can rescrew them into the proper holes. Now it’s time to clean the cabinet doors and stiles ( framework attached to the walls).Use either a paint or lacquer thinner, denatured alcohol or a strong cleanser. First you have to remove the thin layer of built up grease(this is from all the exposure to cooking), using paper towels. Work in small sections. If you clean in large swipes, you’ll be moving the grease from one area to another. The paper towels will be highly combustible due to the thinner or cleanser’s mixing with the grease . Be careful with disposing these or you may wind up with a fire.

After the initial cleaning, go over the surfaces again with either denatured alcohol , lacquer thinner or even a commercial after strip wash. Now let the surfaces dry a good twenty four hours.

Once the cabinets are dried it’s now time to smooth out their surfaces. Fill in any dings, nicks or dimples otherwise you’ll have a veneer that will look bumpy and uneven. Use wood filler according to directions. When the filler is completely dry then you can proceed to the sanding process. Sand with a 180 grit sandpaper and then dust off any sanding debris with a tack cloth. Do the scotch tape test to determine if your surfaces need more cleaning. This is done by sticking a long piece of tape along the surface and then pulling it off quickly. If there is still dust, clean again. Do the tape test until strips comes up completely clean. Any dust will ruin the veneer’s sticky back and may even cause the veneer to fall off. It may mean extra steps, but a clean cabinet surface means a longer lasting and smoother veneer.

Before applying the veneer it’s best to do a test pattern to see how the pieces and grains look against each other. Don’t pair a piece with a large, swirled grain next to one with smaller swirls. Have the patterns gradually blend into each other. Also this helps in fitting the pieces snugly together for a more professional looking fit. Carefully measure your cabinets then draw a rough guide of them (including their dimensions) on graph paper. Indicate, using arrows, the direction of the grain. Allow for ¼” extra veneer on each end because it is difficult to cut the pieces to exact sizes. This may lead to a gap on one side. Also measurements may come skewed in the cutting process. Your cabinet may look like the perfect square or rectangle yet it could be slightly off. For truly precise numbers you can crisscross measure, meaning measure from the upper left hand corner to the lower right and vice versa. Remember to make allowances for the veneer pieces to fit properly.

It’s now time to do a blueprint of sorts. Lay out the veneer again and plan how you exactly want the grain patterns to look. Cut out the largest piece first. If you’ve made a mistake you can always cut this piece down and use to veneer smaller areas such as drawers. To apply the veneer , pick any part of the cabinet to place the covering. Peel the paper from the first couple of inches along the piece’s edge, positioning the veneer as near to the edge as you can. Leave about 1 inch overlay. Gently tap it down in several places along the edge. It should be stuck down enough that it won’t move. Now, very carefully, reach underneath and start removing the paper along with smoothing the veneer with your hand. Use a light, circular motion from the center to the corners. Even out any wrinkles or bubbles. Use your roller or veneer blade , apply as much pressure as you can for a good, long lasting adhesion. Start this in the center and radiate out in all directions. Once the veneer is on it’s now time to trim all overlapping pieces. Be careful and always use your veneer trimming tool. Remember, if you work too vigorously or from the wrong points the veneer can and will sliver off.

Start trim cuts on the end grain( the ends of the cabinet’s doors or ends). Do this from the outside and work towards the middle from both sides. Don’t work in the same direction from one side to the other because you’ll create slivers when you go off of the far side. When trimming all sides, work in the direction of where the grain starts on the inside of the cabinet surface and runs out over the edge. Don't start your cut in the opposite direction and cut against the end grain or you’re likely to tear chips out of the surface. There is an exception to this and that’s when you come against a wall or ceiling, work as close as you can, judiciously and carefully trimming off the remainder. Use a razor knife for this.

You’ll have to sand off excess veneer as well. You’ll need a hard sanding block and 180 grit sandpaper. You’ll also need to take a screwdriver shaft and gently run its’ rounded edge back and forth at an angle to the overlapped edge until it defines where the edge of the cabinet door and ends are, Use your sanding block at an angle to the edge and then sand gently until you go through the veneer. The overage should tear or fall off at this point.

Once this is done, it’s now time to locate the knob and pull holes. Luckily the veneer is thin enough to find the holes by pressing your thumb against the surface. Once the holes are located, take a nail and poke it from the veneer side only(otherwise you’ll have splinters if done from inside the cabinets and drawers). Reattach old knobs and pulls or install brand new ones.

Your cabinets may have tiny cracks where two pieces of veneer didn’t quite overlap. You can fill these in with wood filler. Don’t put this on in blobs because they will show when dried. Very carefully fill in the cracks, filling them just a little higher than the surrounding area. This is to allow shrinkage.

Sanding is another important part of the finishing procedure. You can hand sand with a 220 grit sandpaper or use an electric finishing sander. In either case, you must evenly sand your cabinets’ surface. If you don’t, the areas that aren’t sanded enough will take the stain darker, making for an over all blotchy look. However if this happens, you can easily remedy this by resanding and restaining. Never sand across the grain or you’ll ruin it. Sand all the edges with great care. You want the veneer, no matter how thin it is, to have an all over properly prepared look.

The final steps are staining and refinishing. A polyurethane stain is recommended and you can get one in a complimentary color to your cabinets. A sealant is then applied to lock in the color and to protect the veneer.

Refinishing makes your old cabinets look like they’re brand new. It can also boost your kitchen’s look, transforming drab and dingy into new and sparkling. It is a lot of time and effort but it’s worth it. The result is a beautiful cooking and eating area that will last for years to come.

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