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What to do with dark 70's kitchen cabinets?

16 years ago

We're moving soon into a home with those dark 70's cabinets. They are in good shape, and the detailing isn't even too bad. But the color is definitely dated. What options do we have to fix these? We have a severely limited budget (like just a few hundred dollars for this) so ripping them out at this point is impossible.

Paint?

Polyshades?

Completely refinish?

My husband does have a shop and some skill in building new, but not so much in refinishing.

What do you suggest?

Thanks!

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Comments (2)

sharon_sd
16 years ago
Your most "bang for the buck" solution would be paint. Take a door to a good paint store, not a big box with a paint department. They will be able to advise you about pretreating, primers and finish paint that will give you a good job on your particular cupboards.

Polyshades will not lighten the cabinets, but it could be used to darken them.

Strip and refinish may be possible, but it is a huge amount of work. If the cupboards are veneer, it will be almost impossible to strip them carefully enough to not damage the finish and still get a good result.
hendricus
16 years ago
Clean, paint, stain, and two coats of minwax polycrilic. We had those same cupboards in our house. I removed all the hardware, painted them a darkes yellow color, cheap latex, used the stain from a kit for staining fiberglass doors and the graining tool. Son-in-law, contractor, walked in the door and said, wow, new cupboards? Matched the new oak cupboards we used to build a peninsula.
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