Home Removal Services Blog

In many ways, it is rewarding to restore an old house or even renovate a newer one. Probably one of the most disliked projects yet most impressive when completed is your cabinets in many cases. Hopefully you can at least take the doors off and work in your workshop on them. This just leaves the base of the cabinets themselves. No doubt, this is going to cause some disruption in the kitchen and the dust from the sanding can be annoying to deal with particularily in this room.

To do the job right its means you have to strip all the old product such as paint and finish off. Then you have to bleach the wood to remove either the stains that were left from the old finish or having something spilt or set on them. Then there is sanding and scraping to tend to. Finally, there is the new stain and them the finish to be done. After all,\ of this you can sit back and admire you long and enduring hard work.

Most jobs of this magnitude don?t usually go all that trouble free. You will run into at least a few minor snags, but the majority of them can be dealt with. It?s important that you know the wood that your cabinets are made from. If it?s an older house don?t be surprised to find out that there are several varieties that were used. In this case, you will never get one light stain to come out the same on all the pieces. You can however go to a deeper stain and get results that are more satisfactory.

You really may want to consider buying new doors and drawers and just keeping the original framework. When you are working with the many chemicals it would take to strip your cupboards most often, it can be too harsh on older wood. Another issue is getting the old finish totally stripped at hard to get at pieces can sometimes be impossible. Then once you even get to the point where the old cupboards are prepared for the new stain and finishes you have to take into account the several coatings you are going to have to apply and the drying time that is going to be involved. The kitchen is one of the most difficult rooms to work in because of the food preparation, grease and steam that is almost always present there.

Before you say no to the idea of buying new doors and drawers at least check out your home improvement store and see what they have to offer. At least this way you are covering all of the possible options and making an informed opinion.

If you have decided to go ahead with the original, you may want to consider at least buying new hardware. In the older cupboards quite often the door handles didn?t have a lot of character and the knobs were likely ceramic that has become cracked and chipped.

You are going to have to make decisions on what type of refinish you are going to do. This is best done after all the preparation work is done so you can see what condition the cabinets are in. This will determine if you are going to have to go with a darker stain.

All too often, novice woodworkers don’t realize the power of wood putty. No doubt, they have heard about it and perhaps worked with it once or twice but had poor results. Chances are they either used the wrong product or the wrong application or maybe even both. It is sometimes referred to as wood filler or wood patch. It may be a water base or a solvent based. Solvent base has probably been the favored choice in the past. The water-based products have really made some excellent strides in their performance and are now being used more.

There is nitrocellulose-based putty. This dries very fast. To clean up all you need is some diluted acetone or lacquer thinner.

A gypsum-based putty comes in a powder form and you have to mix the proper ratio with water. If you clean up while it?s wet, it?s simply done with plain water. If you let the gypsum dry and try to clean up with water, it just isn?t going to happen.

Finally, an acrylic based putty will clean up with water as well until it dries then after that you will need to clean with acetone or toluene.

There are advantages to working with water wood-based fillers because they don?t have the heavy fumes to them that the solvent-based ones do and they are easier to work with. What woodworkers like about it the most though is how easy it is to clean up. It is also more economical for storage as it doesn?t? dry out as fast as the solvent-based putties do.

All wood putty is really is a glue mixed with material such a sawdust or gypsum for example. It creates a binder that holds the filler together.

Once you get used to working with wood putty ideally, you will want to keep both on hand if you are an avid wood worker or do it yourselfer.

Knowing which putty to use in the beginning may be a bit of a challenge. You want one that is going to stick and not shrink once it has dried. Another attribute about a good filler is you should need to sand it a great deal and it should have a satin finish to it afterwards.

Woods like poplar, rosewood or walnut just to name a few have very large pores and open grains. You can use wood filler to even out some of the grains in these types of woods.

Another good feature about wood putty is that it comes it different colors, which makes it much easier for blending. Ideally, before you use any of the colors check it on an unobserved piece of the wood to see what the end result is going to be. It may come out lighter or darker than you intended. If you are new to using wood putty ask your local paint supplier which seems to be the favored by most of their customers. This often gives you a good indication on how good and effective a product will be.