Clean, Smart, Simple Style: Gel Stain Kitchen Cabinet

We are now finally officially moved into our new place, and out of our old place. It was quite a process doing it all ourselves, but now it's all behind us and we can finally just focus on living in ONE place instead of trying to keep up with two.

The projects around here are happening almost faster than I can keep up with them, so you'll have to forgive me if some of my posts are lacking complete step by step photos.

I alluded to one of our larger projects in one of my past posts, but I never elaborated, so here is where I spill all of the details on our partial kitchen renovation that we didn't exactly plan on doing. We knew moving in that the kitchen was not going to stay the same long term- but the plan was to clean it up and then just live with it for a year or so while we saved up for things like new counters and new backsplash.

Day 1 of having the keys my hubby started scrubbing the kitchen- equipped with every cleaning product that we could get our hands on. Our first discovery was that the stove was not salvageable. It was just too disgusting to want to cook on- even after taking it apart and scrubbing it for basically an entire day. We already had to buy a new fridge (because the house didn't have one), so we added a stove onto the list.

Then came the cabinets. Ick. I have no idea what went on in this house when the previous owners lived here- but I can tell you that wiping down their cabinets after cooking was definitely NOT a part of their routine. Grape jelly in an open blender became our best guess for what had happened at one point before we moved in.

Imagine that dark icky sticky mess inside and outside of every cabinet. 

We had talked about re-doing the cabinet faces at some point- either staining them darker or painting them white- but it was never an immediate plan until we started to realize that the only way to get the cabinets clean was to sand the grime off of them.

So on day 2 I walked into the house one day and saw this:

After a few hours on Pinterest, we came up with a plan, and it was basically to use a gel stain to stain them darker without having to completely sand down to the bone of the cabinets. We consulted these 2 tutorials (here, and here) before moving forward- and followed along for the most part.

We used 120 grit paper and a little bit of elbow grease. We didn't sand off the finish entirely- except where it was necessary to remove the grape jelly. We used a sanding block to help get into the corners and grooves.

(See below how we didn't really sand down to the bare wood? We just roughed it up a bit and tried to get it clean).

This step involved about 10 thousand of those wipes and a bunch more elbow grease. If your cabinets are in good shape, all you need to do is get the dust off from the sanding. In our case, the edges still needed a lot of work to get the jelly grease out of the spaces that our sander or sandpaper couldn't fit. Some of the edges still never really came clean- but we moved forward hoping the stain would cover it.

Instead of using a brush we followed the other blogs' advice and used a men's sock (white athletic) over a glove. Over a Nitrile or Vinyl glove. NOT latex. My  hubby missed that memo and the stain ate through his first latex glove.

We taped off the wall (except for two spots where we forgot to- whoops).

Then: glove followed by sock, dip in stain, and wipe/rub it into the wood.

Especially for the first coat you can rub in circular motions to get the stain into/onto the wood, but try to wipe it in a smooth motion along the grain as you get to subsequent coats.
The first coat was very uneven- especially on some of the dirtier cabinets where we just couldn't get all of the grease off. For best results I'd say make sure your cabinets are pristinely clean before you start.

But as we got to the 2nd and 3rd coats it was less and less noticeable how gross our cabinets were to begin with. I was also getting much better at getting the stain to go on nice and smooth and even without any streaks or marks against the grain. (Hint, do the sunken details first, and then the center and raised edges in long clean swipes without lifting your socked hand. The key is to wipe top to bottom in one motion without lifting your sock).

We usually let each coat dry for ~24hrs before moving on. (Oh and get some of this nice thick brown paper from your home improvement store- anything else and the stain will probably soak through and ruin your floor. It's impossible to get the edges without making a mess).

We ended up doing 3 coats of stain on all of the surfaces.  Times 30 cabinets. Front and back. Yeah, it took us an entire week working several hours every day. The good news is that the stain goes really far and we only used 1 jar for the entire project.

It dried pretty dark matte almost black and I was having 2nd thoughts as we finished it up, but like I said- the stain wasn't taking to some of the grimy edges until we had a few coats on.

We let the last coat of stain dry for 2 days and then did a top coat of Polyurethane, using the same glove-sock method. I tried a brush and it was too streaky/bubbly. A sock really worked best.

By this time I had the process down to a science so that there were no streaks, no bubbles and no marks against the grain. I tried to surrender the job to my hubby so he could finish up one night and my explanation for how to do it was so long and detailed that he insisted I finish it myself. I'm ready to take this show on the road if anyone wants help!

Anyway, the poly really brightened the cabinets up, made the stain look a little lighter and brought back the grain of the wood. This is where you'll really notice if the stain is not even, so while you are staining make sure you follow the grain of the wood!

We also ended up replacing all of the hinge hardware because the old ones were all rusted out.

Ok. so enough blabber, you want to see the good stuff don't you?

But, I'm such a tease. One photo is all you get.

I took SO many photos of our completed kitchen that they need a post all to themselves. Come back tomorrow for the rest! (click the link on "tomorrow" to see the goods!)

p.s. Did you know I have a shop full of my artwork on Society6.com? Check it out!

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About K-Sora

Travelling is my life

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