Triumph!

My kitchen and bathroom cabinets have been showing 28 years of wear. Knowing we don't want to stay forever in this house, and whoever buys it will probably replace all the cabinets, I decided to do a fix-up job.

First I scrubbed them with trisodium phosphate, rinsed, let dry, then I sanded, stained, and put two coats of polyurethane on them. (See previous post about having an occupied garage.) The guy at Walmart who said he refinished furniture for a living, said it couldn't be done, he said I would have to completely strip the cabinets and doors, then start from scratch. I told him these are old cabinets and I'm not putting that much time and money into something that someone might tear out in five years.

Well, here are the results.


The first picture is the worn cabinet, after scrubbing and sanding. The second is after the stain. I used a gel stain-I like the way it doesn't drip or splatter. I'll use it again.

And here are the final results:

Not so bad if I do say so myself!

An aside- DH decided he had to help me reinstall the doors, and as we speak he's trying to figure out how to fix the broken screws that are stuck in one door in our bathroom. His motto is, "If hard is good, harder must be better," and he broke them clean off. If he would have just left me alone..............