I used gel stain on my bedroom furniture in the java. It's very dark. I thought it was really easy to work with and I enjoyed doing it. The results are really great. I recently painted my kitchen cabinets - they are maple though so much less grain than oak which could be an issue to think about. Painting was much, much harder than using the gel stain. I worked as hard as I could to have a good finish on them. There are visible brush marks though. If one were to compare I think the gel stain looks more "professional" in that it's very even there aren't any brush marks, etc. If I were you I'd paint the cabinets but I really like white cabinets. The grain could bother you so you'd have to consider using a filler if that'd be the case. Another option would be to stain the cabinets and paint the trim white. Let us know what you decide! Good luck!

Okay, I'm committed to do it. Three little questions. The door has very little fiberglass area to stain as it has an oval leaded glass window. The perimeter of the window is not fiberglass, but what appears to be a type of plastic/pvc frame. Will that accept stain in the same way as the fiber glass, or should it be painted as though it were trim? And: since the inside of the door will also be stained, does the entire jam get stained? The homeowner wants the trim and inner jamb painted the trim color and just the background area of the door and sidelights to be stained.. Will this look odd? I'm guessing that the sides(inner and outer edges of the door) are also stained, right?

We have wood blinds with white trim, so I don't see why you cannot do cream blinds with stained trim. Wood colored blinds would not have been my first choice, but we had a problem with the window frames on the outside of our house. They were already put in a new build when we bought the house and they are grayish. In addition, our stucco window trim is beige/cream. I thought that if we used the white blinds, they would stick out like a sore thumb from the outside. We tried it, and they did. Funny...My first ever post here on Garden Web was 8 years ago where I was asking if I had made a mistake with the blinds. :) I have gotten use to the wood color on the inside (they blend with the wood floors), but they do darken the house a bit. This post was edited by newhomebuilder on Mon, Oct 13, 14 at 13:13

Take my advice with a grain of salt, since I've gel stained exactly 1 tiny cabinet door back! Here's what I've taken from all the messages, and our plan of action. You'll need to lightly sand the old finish - we've used a sanding sponge, and that works pretty well. No need to go nuts and remove everything - just rough up the surface. The problem is in your intended application. In order to get an even-looking stain, you may need to go darker. I'm working with Java (the darkest General gel stain available), and we've put on a lot of coats to get it to look nice and smooth. If you're working with a lighter color, you may still need more coats than you think for a smooth look. We went dark in order to hide some of the honey oak graininess. I think if I were in the same situation (my parents have similar paneled walls), I'd probably paint instead, only because I wouldn't want the wall to be too dark, and I'm not sure how it would look with a lighter gel stain.