Stain should be applied over raw wood, not wood that has already been painted. Once they are painted you are sort of stuck unless you want to be creative and do a faux or some kind or woodgraining or strip the cabinets and start fresh. Woodgraining is a pretty advanced technique and even those that do it perfectly still can't get it to look like real wood. Stripping is very labor intensive and should only be done if the wood is worth saving. Some cabinets are built with a paint grade type of wood that is not worthy of staining or they may be constructed with melamine or some other type of veneer.

People either LOVE or HATE this look.... (I'm of the latter here!) To ME anyway, the "antiquing" looks dirty. That's just MY opinion, FWIW! If you're gonna do it, use a Glaze made for the purpose. Dried stain on top of paint will just hold dirt. It's NOT washable. Also, Id start just wiping-on small amounts of glaze/paint-mix...maybe just at the edges. It's easier to add more. Using the instructions in that link are fine....BUT, it can be too much change for some! Faron

I can tell you the painted route is definitely cheaper. You don't have to worry about having as high quality wood and the painting process is definitely less time consuming than staining. We originally budgeted to do painted cabinets but ended up going with stained. In the end, like icequeen mentioned above, its nice seeing a hint of the natural wood through the stain. Here is a link that might be useful: My Kitchen!

I adore travertine! I have it in a (seldom used) entry, honed, and tumbled on my kitchen backsplash. With 3 applications of sealer on the backplash and a Mr Clean Eraser (love those things!) NOTHING has stained the kitchen backsplash. My (seldom used) entry has a stain on it right now from a worker who kicked up the protective paper and tracked in some unknown something on it. Yes, it was sealed. I haven't tried a poltice yet. All the chemicals and products that get used in a bathroom (makeups, lotions & oils, medical supplies, hair color, etc)...I don't want to have to worry about staining it and keeping it sealed so I chose a porcelain lookalike. saskatchewan_girl, thank you! In the store, the manufacture's name is Marazzi. Style is Eclipse (or Eclypse) and the color is Moonlight. It's the lightest of 4 shades. The one next to it was very pretty too! However, you won't find it on the Marazzi website. I discovered that a company called Ragno actually owns Marazzi and this tile (for whatever reason) is under the Ragno name. But like I said, in the store, it has a Marazzi sticker on it. The decorators where I bought mine said they use this all the time for it's realistic travertine look and it matches really well when mixing it with real travertine (as I did). I don't know the retail price but I think it's an inexpensive tile. We paid $2 sq ft. My husband works for the design shop where we purchased it so we get a good discount. I wish I could help with the name of the cabinet stain. We had the vanity custom built. The painter would bring me samples. I described it as a "deep chocolate" brown. Everything was too light till I finally asked "what part of 'deep chocolate' don't you understand? (lol) The next sample was, as they say, spot on! Monica