Bleach Your Kitchen Cabinets
By Jim MalleryRefacingCabinet.com Columnist
If you have quality kitchen cabinets, but you are sick of them, maybe the best advice is to just lighten up. Bleach the cabinets, that is. Take the old color out and start over. It's a lot cheaper than dumping thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars into new cabinets. Here are tips for bleaching your cabinets.
Undoubtedly, your kitchen cabinets have a varnish, lacquer, or polyurethane finish over the stained wood. To get to the stain, you must remove the finish. Stripping your cabinets is the worst part of the project, and is the subject of another article. In a nutshell, you must remove the doors and drawers, all their hardware, and using a stripping solution, remove the finish. It's easy to say, but a chore to actually accomplish. Depending on the type of stain on your cabinets, you have three bleach options:
- Chlorine Bleach. The most common stain on cabinets is a dye stain that you can remove with chlorine bleach. You can purchase chlorine bleaches for wood at the hardware store, or you can make a very effective version with swimming pool chlorine (use a "shock" package, a common product available at anyplace that sells pool supplies). Mix the powder (usually calcium hypochlorite) until the water won't dissolve any more. Wearing protective gloves and goggles, apply the mixture liberally to the wood and let it sit. The wood may lighten rapidly or it may take overnight for full effect. Two applications should be all you need. If you see no lightening, then your cabinets have a type of stain unaffected by the chlorine-based bleach. Most likely it is a pigment stain, which you may be able to lighten a little withi peroxide bleach, but you can only remove it completely by sanding and scraping. Chlorine bleaches also remove many food stains but they also eat up color in clothing you might be wearing, so handle with care.
- Peroxide Bleach. This is a two-part application (Part A and Part B) usually available in hardware stores. Although they might have some effect in lightening pigment dyes, they are best for lightening the natural color of wood, and not for removing previously applied stain. Wet the wood with Part A (sodium hydroxide), then apply Part B (hydrogen peroxide). Peroxide bleaches wash out natural color variations in wood, and should be used judiciously for special stain applications.
- Oxalic Acid. This bleach is used primarily to remove unplanned staining, such as ring stains left by wet glasses or other sources of moisture on woods such as oak, mahogany and cherry. You may need to apply several applications to completely remove these stains.
Anytime you use bleach to remove a stain, you should rinse well with distilled water. For a final rinse on chlorine bleach, use a weak vinegar solution to neutralize the akalinity. You can give oxalic acid bleach a final rinse with a weak solution of baking soda to neutralize the acid.
Proper bleaching of your kitchen cabinets can give you a lighter wood, ready for any new application of stain you want to apply.
About The Author
Jim Mallery, a semi-retired journalist and onetime registered contractor, has extensive experience remodeling, repairing and rebuilding homes.
