Has anyone stained a cabinet?

carrotsoup70

The cabinets that are currently in my house are boring light oak builder grade cabinets. I was thinking about staining the small bathroom cabinet a darker color. If it works there then I will work on the other rooms. Has anyone had any luck with this type of project? I figure it's cheaper than putting in a new cabinet and since there isn't anything wrong with it I really don't want to replace it. Any suggestions or experiences that might help?

TIA!

C12H22O11

I haven't stained, but I've painted the cabinets in two of our bathrooms. After the first time, I swore I'd never do it again...and after the second time, I'm definitely never doing it again.  I've stained a couple wood crafts and found it kind of difficult to get even application.

To get a stain to take evenly, you have to sand away the varnish. If you go darker, you can just sand the wood lightly; if you go lighter, you have to sand enough away to get rid of the previous stain. I found the cabinet doors were pretty easy to sand when I prepped for paint (I removed them and sanded them outside) but the cabinet portion was really hard, plus it made a horrible, dusty mess (I was using a power sander).

Since you're just wanting to do a small bathroom cabinet, I'd go for it. Just be aware that even a tiny cabinet can be time consuming. 

MNgirl326

yes, DH and I restained all of the cabinets in the kitchen and it is do-able but it definitely a project. 

The first thing you have to do is strip all the old stain and varnish off the cabinet.  There is some orange goo that you can buy that you basically paint on, let sit and then scrape off.  It takes the varnish off.   We had to this 2-3 times to get all the varish and stain off. 

Then you have to wash the wood, really really well.  I think we washed it 2-3 times as well.

Then when it comes to staining, we bought one that already had a varnish built in.   You paint it on and then wipe off the extra.  I would go through and paint, and DH would come through behind me with a cloth and wipe it down. The biggest challenge is making sure you are keeping the stain even the whole project through.  The amount of time you leave the stain on before wiping, determines how dark it gets.  We have a couple of spots where we didn't leave it on as long and there are inconsistencies in the darkness of the stain. 

I ended up varnishing over the stain with a clear varninsh because it was our kitchen and I knew with grease and such I wanted extra protection. 

In the end the cabinets look great, but it was a lot of work. 

carrotsoup70

Thanks for your input. It's good to hear that its not hard but is time consuming. I'll try to do it one Sundays when DH is home to help with Jake. Now to figure out what color stain to use. I really like the idea of a color (blue, green, gray) but I think it might be too trendy.

Dougsgirl4ever

Day late but I've used the Rustoleum cabinet kit & LOVED how it turned out.  We had oak cabinets when we bought our house & they are now dark Espresso. It was super easy to do to.