Here are a few pictures from my kitchen remodel. I’m refinishing the base cabinets to start with. You see in the picture from the last post that they were a caramel color. I am lucky that they are older oak cabinets. There’s a lot of wood to work with, which is good because removing the old finish took A LOT of sanding!

Here is what they look like partially sanded:

Once they were sanded, I stained them the darker color I wanted. The poor fellas at Sherwin-Williams took one of my freshly sanded practice boards and mixed up several samples for me. At one point we joked that they were going to sneak out and put a GPS tracker on my car so they would know when to hide and shut out the lights when I was headed their way! They were such good sports. I still haven’t figured out why my initial stain didn’t take as well as it should have. But we found the general color I wanted.

Here is the inside of one cabinet door:

After staining, I put two coats of sanding sealer on them. Next I will sand them lightly and finish them with a couple of coats of satin polyurethane. Then clean up the hardware, reinstall them, and they’re ready for dishes.

I’m pleased with how they look so far. I admit that I considered getting all new and sending them to the landfill. I’m so glad I went the cheapskate route.

I plan to paint the top cabinets a light yellow color. I’ll try to keep posting pictures along the way.

Here’s a funny one of me with all of my respirator and ear protection on: