Your cabinets are beautiful! Unless you absolutely hate the way they look, leave them as they are. Otherwise prepare yourself for a l-o-n-g haul. I stripped & refinished all moulding and kitchen cabinets in house we bought for re-sale...what a NIGHTMARE! First, all doors and drawers were numbered so they'd go back to original location. I used stripper, then sanded for days. Stain went on next, then three coats of clear with sanding between each. Before tackling this I loved to refinish but won't go near it now & I didn't have near the length of strap hinges nor as many cabinets as you have. Suzi

I use these (professionally) and have never had a problem removing a water blush in just a few minutes. You can also usually find them at Ace Hardware, Lowe's and Bed, Bath & Beyond in their cleaning / furniture care product aisle. In my experience, rarely would you need to strip and refinish unless the finish is blistered and peeling off (I can't tell from the photo) Likewise, you may need to buff out the whole top to even the sheen. The cloth will also remove light scuffing. Clean up the residual oil with an emulsion furniture polish Here is a link that might be useful: water ring removal cloth

It is MUCH cheaper to have a few pieces of hardwood added (your professional flooring refinisher can do this for you...for a fee of course) and the whole thing refinished than it is to lay new plywood and then lay new hardwood. A full sand and refinish = $5/sf. That is the average cost. That includes labour and materials. If you need to source some pieces of hardwood and then lace them into the existing floor, it will add a few hundred dollars to the overall job. Now compare that to BAD (low end piece-of-junk) engineered hardwood. You can purchase the hardwood for $4.99/sf (please don't....they aren't worth the "savings") and then you will spend $2-$3/sf to install it...and that does NOT include new plywood (you can add another $2/sf for plywood+labour to install it). Refinish = $5/sf (plus a little more for new wood to be laced in) Add new engineered hardwood = $5 - $12/sf (floor itself) + labour ($2-$3/sf) + plywood.....a grand total of $9/sf - $17/sf. It's your call. The first thing you want to do is check to see how much wood is left on those old planks. Find a floor vent to look at the cross-section. Measure the amount of wood ABOVE the tongue. You will need 3mm of wood to get a full sand/refinish done. Start there. A sand/refinish is ALWAYS cheaper than new flooring. That's why solid hardwood is always more desirable. It can be CHEAPER to own over it's life time (60-80 years) than any other floor.

We have a contemporary house, the entry and steps and the patio/deck are concrete. We would like it to match the house style, but the finish is terrible, uneven and not square/plumbed. (See phots). What would be the best way to re-finish it? (We are in Northern California, so no freeze problems.) Thanks in advance for all suggestions. Mimi