How to Refresh Your Kitchen Cabinets (page 2 of 2)

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Tips and Tricks

Use a Jig for Fast, Accurate Knob Placement
I chose 1-1/4 in. black steel knobs ($3 at a home center) instead of pulls or handles for this project. Center the doorknobs so they fall on the diagonal line formed by the corner of the door and the intersection of the bottom and side grooves in the door face. Put drawer knobs in the exact center of the drawer. If your drawer faces are all the same height, you’ll need only one hole for drawer knobs in your jig.

The bolts that come with your knobs usually work fine on the doors, but drawer construction varies and you often need a longer screw for the drawer. Ideally, the screw should be 3/8 to 1/2 in. longer than the material is thick. So, measure your drawer thickness, then pick up some 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 in. x 8/32 in. bolts if needed.

Watch for Trouble Spots
We found three potential trouble spots in this project:

Valances over the sink
False sink fronts
Doors without a center stile

If you have an ornate valance over the sink, you may want to remove it. The style may not work well with the project shown here.

Most sink cabinets have a false front above the doors. You’ll have to remove this piece to rout the grooves. Sometimes it will be held in place with wooden cleats that are easily turned. But other times it will be held with glued cleats, and you’ll have to use a chisel and a hammer to knock these cleats off, but the front will come out.

It’s also possible that you’ll have a pair of doors without a center stile. They usually have a pair of drawers above them that do have a gap between the drawer faces. This creates a problem with the groove alignment. To solve it, don’t cut vertical grooves on the sides of the drawer faces above the spot where the doors meet. This way, the drawer faces won’t have grooves that don’t line up; instead they’ll look more like the wide false front by the sink.

Goof-Proofing Tip:
If a new hinge hole happens to align with a larger existing hole on the face frame, clean out the old hole. Next, put dabs of glue on the ends of toothpicks and break the toothpick tips off in the hole. Then drive the new screw.

Selecting a Finish
For our project, I used amber-tinted shellac as a primer. Shellac will stick to any kind of finish, so you don’t need to know what’s on your cabinets (though it’s probably lacquer). Also, the amber tint added a warm, rich color to the doors.

When you buy the shellac, don’t stir it. It contains settled wax on the bottom that may interfere with the final finish. Separate the good finish by pouring off the clearer liquid into a separate container. Don’t use the milky cream at the bottom of the can.

For the final finish, I used water-based polyurethane because shellac by itself isn’t durable enough for a kitchen. Water-based polyurethane is very tough, and since both it and shellac are fast-drying, the finish is less likely to attract dust (and you can use your kitchen sooner).

Special Tools and Materials
Sharp chisel