It's easy, with the right products. Start with a wipe-on white stain: http://www.generalfinishes.com/retail-products/oil-base-wood-stains-sealers/oilbase-liquid-penetrating-wood-stains When you are happy with the white, cover it with a clear topcoat. Apply your glaze to the topcoat. ========== Change your technique - if you are slathering on the glaze and wiping off you can run out of working time. And, any glaze will "stain" whatever you wipe it onto. Wipe slightly diluted glaze on thinly with a soft cloth, building up the coats if needed.

Ah! Thanks. So cutting through it would ruin the stability of the door. Makes sense. Are the sides of a hollow-core door about 2 inches thick as well? Or thinner? Since it's to be a sliding door, I also thought about cutting off one corner, cutting up from the bottom, and then in from the left side. This would be on the advancing edge. This would not be flapped, just open. I thought if then we buy the door a little oversize, we could pull it more closed to seal off this small opening if needed. It's to be a surface mount system, like a barn door, mounted on the side away from the kitchen, so door would be oversize on the pantry side and overlap the doorframe by whatever we decide. The hardware is from Johnson Hardware, that makes sliding door systems. We haven't bought the door yet. We could go with a solid door: I looked at some that were oak veneer with a particle board interior, and edges in pine. The door/hardware company was urging a solid core door on me, but I am concerned about the weight with a sliding door. I have had nothing but hollow core doors in every house before. (We did not discuss the cat-flap issue!) Thanks for your help: suggestions are welcome. Both on the door in general and the cat-flap.

The tile is grey linen glass subway mosaic we found at Lowe's. Our local store had it in stock. It was a little under $10/sq ft. It is grey with subtle lines going the length of the tile. We needed something not too busy because the granite had plenty going on. If you need a color other than grey, perhaps a tile store can check to see if it is manufactured in other colors. Good luck finding something that works.

I don't know where you guys are, but actually around here everything gets painted white..:) (ah unless it exterior-they're suddenly into a tad darker browns. The builders I mean) I know there's gray trend but I know because I'm here and I read blogs and such otherwise I wouldn't know probably. (we re in OC, CA) so I wouldn't care whether gray is a trend or not I would just care that whatever color I choose(if deciding to paint at all) it's the color that makes sense with other colors that are there to stay..and with my own mindset that's probably to stay too, at least to some degree all these whites and grays and greiges are so different too..like, hundreds of them they also change in different lights..that is our brain that assigns them a constant definition, really I have a very warm greige kitchen and sometimes it's totally oatmeal and sometimes it's more greenish off white..it doesn't even have a name since the color is custom, and it's somebody else's custom color, so I just called it after myself lol, to make things easier. and recently I got so confused, like majorly confused, since I read on one blog "greige is white with some gray in it". I thought white with gray in it is an off white? don't you have to have beige-a light version of brown-thrown into it to get greige? I think that's a hard-to reach-consensus since I'm not even sure of definitions. and I'm very into everything about colors, so would make sense for me to become more sure, but it doesn't work that way lol. Somehow. What I know though-until we have our world and nature around us, all the colors that are there, be it sea or sky or snow or sand or leaves..they're timeless..:) to us they are, since we have much shorter expiration date..:) ah, and I love that idea with foam too..much easier to apply and to switch and to change