Refininshing Kitchen Cabinets: The Final Touches
By Gabby HymanRefacingCabinet.com Columnist
There are few limits refinishing your kitchen cabinets. You'll discover an extensive range in colors, materials, stains, glazes, and veneers to suit your décor and your budget. Even inexpensive kitchen cabinets can be durable and attractive, and can add to the overall value of your home. Let's look at the major options:
Unfinished, Natural Wood
Whether you've selected pricey custom or inexpensive stock kitchen cabinets, you can choose to present the wood in its natural state, with a single sealing topcoat to protect your investment.
Staining Kitchen Cabinets
Staining kitchen cabinets adds color and can be matched with a complementary glaze to bring out the texture and patterns in the wood. Adding attractive hardware creates the finished effect.
Paints and Glazes
Paints allow you to change the color of the wood to directly suit your décor. Enamels work best with tight-grain wood types in covering the underlying wood patterns. Complementary glazes can add a third effect without appreciably affecting the cost.
Distressed Cabinet Effects
If you're creating a period reconstruction or altering your kitchen cabinet scheme to fit an era, distressed processes. Manufacturers and some contractors specialize in adding imperfections in cabinet texture (wormholes, cracks, etc.) that create the effect of long-term wear.
Inexpensive Kitchen Cabinets: Veneers
Veneers are skinny sheets of wood that are attached to the faces, tops, drawers, and sides of your cabinets to add patterns and color. They can make for attractive yet inexpensive kitchen cabinets if the consumer shops around for estimates. Some come with paper backing for peel-and-stick use, but unless you're skilled with veneering blades, saws, and band irons, you shouldn't go it alone.
About The Author
Gabby Hyman has created online strategies and written content for Fortune 500 companies including eToys, GoTo.com, Siebel Systems, Microsoft Encarta, Avaya, and Nissan UK.
