Refinishing solid oak kitchen cabinets

This kitchen cabinet set is 25 years old and it featured door handles in the middle of the door panel. They wanted new hardware and the door handles moved to the lower corner of the doors.
This renovation allowed me to make use of a HVLP sprayer I bought a while back. I also needed some sort of spray booth … on the cheap. So I took my trusty floor model commercial fan unit, along with a few sheets of left over 2 inch rigid foam insulation panels, and a furnace filter. Sadly, I think the spray killed my fan near the end of the spraying. 🙁 I’ll miss that fan. It moved A LOT of air.
I was not able to get “before” pictures. Below are a few pictures of the refinishing process. 20 doors and 7 drawer faces were sanded down by hand and re-sprayed using Watco Clear Lacquer Satin Finish. This product provides a superior finish that is durable and hard. It dries fast so it was easy to apply 3 coats in one day.

I used a large lazy susan bearing and two scrap piece of plywood to make a quick turn table. Sure made it easier to coat the doors.

I took some scrap plywood pieces and screwed in 4 drywall screws, one in each corner, to act as a stand for each door. This allowed me to spray booth sides of the door at the same time.

Below are pictures of the completed refinishing and reinstallation. The oak medallions (Richelieu product) were ordered through Central Home Improvement, see Lionel in the Kitchen department. The medallions were used to cover up the holes where the old handles were located. This remodel cost far less that purchasing new doors and drawer faces and definitely cheaper than getting a new cabinet system. The only reason these doors were re-useable were because they were solid oak and they were well maintained by the homeowner.



