Bumping up for comments.

well, the kitchen cabinets are made and they are beautiful. He makes beautiful custom kitchens. We also have a very beautiful premium veneer that he found after a lot of search (quartered sawn walnut). That was a special order.

If your guy is using a floor finish polyurethane, it’s not surprising that it looks unimpressive. What has he actually tried? Did he use any stain before hand? What brand and what product? We’re they actually cabinet finishes?

Finishing is the 50% of the cabinets that gets touched and takes the wear and tear. It’s also 40-80% of the cost of cabinets, depending on the finish chosen. Most custom makers spend years coming up to speed on finishes.

@ProSource Memphis, he will use the materials I would ask for. The kitchen will be walnut and for the island lacquer. For the lacquer he uses a color from Benjamin Moore. For the walnut, he was using some custom stain from Shewin Williams and conditioner with satin poly, I don't know from what company.

@ProSource Memphis

@ProSource Memphis it came like in the pic, but I felt it was too dark and the color variation is not dramatic enough

So I would really appreciate any advice on how to finish that walnut. I would like it to show the color variation as much as possible and have a more intense reddish/brownish color. If you can also recommend materials and brands, that will help too.

The darkness and lack of color variation is due to the build choice of the sawing of the wood veneer. The grain is not flat sawn. That cannot be changed. Only time will lighten it. Clear coat with a Milesi or Renner finish, and keep it well lit. That will accelerate the natural fading of the walnut. Your cabinet guy need to move up to the latest industrial wood coatings and stay away from paint store products. Lacquer is 40 years out of date as a finish.

Walnut normally lightens as it ages.

Quartersawn walnut will never be plain sawn walnut.

You don’t have the right expectations for what you asked to have built. They will lighten up overtime, but they will never have the flat sawn grain pattern with the bigger color variation in the grain. You could have them bleached, but they would end up very pale as they age. Your best bet is to clear coat with a modern cabinet finish like Envirolak, Renner, Ilva, Milesi, or Sirca. Try local first. Available from Timberlane Finishes via mail if you can’t find them local. If you’re in a large enough city, there should be a coatings distributor from which your cabinet pros buys. He will need the right spray equipment. Have him join the Kitchen Cabinet Painting Experts group on Facebook. All kinds of cabinet coatings are discussed there.

A woodworker and carpenter still is not a cabinet maker. A cabinet maker has mastered finishing in their shop. With modern dyes, and modern 2K finishes. Having that crappalicious terrible quality piece as a goal should be pretty low down on the list of goals. It used “rustic” rejects as a feature, instead of putting them in the scrap heap.

LOL... cabinet making is fairly remedial for a woodworker and probably for a finish carpenter, if that carpenter has the necessary tools. An amateur level woodworker could produce cabinets that are just as well made as any cabinet shop. They will not produce them as quickly and they will not produce them as efficiently, but their quality will be as good or better.

You are comparing a painter to an artist and claiming that experience in painting a house equates to a better understanding of color. It doesn't.

You could probably make a legit claim that a cabinet maker will have the edge on a woodworker for paints, but that reverses for wood grains. I don't know any woodworker who would struggle to get walnut to pop.

If I had time I would just go old school and pop it with LSO. If I had less time I would do an LSO and Poly mix. If I needed the grain to pop and had labor but no time, I would hit it with a dark dye and light sand-off. If I had no time I would just hit it with an orange dye. It is finishing that way because it was kiln dried rather than air dried and there are a thousand ways that experienced woodworkers fix kiln dried before finishing, but all experienced woodworkers fix kiln dried.

ETA: You are not going to get the cathedral effect from quarter sawn Walnut, but that is either a picture taken with a softening filter active on the camera or kiln dried Walnut that no one thought to fix.

Thanks @Celadon @bry911. I actually specifically asked for quartered sawn walnut because I wanted a European style kitchen and was afraid that the cathedral will look more traditional. The inside of the door is actually the cathedral walnut as you can see in the pic with the trays above (Quartered was much more expensive so I only used it on the outside) I did not realize that will reduce color variation. I just want the colors to be more intense. I will try the orange dye method (I also just read about it in another blog) and if works, I will suggest to my carpenter (or cabinet maker :) ) Thanks!

This is BTW the colors that I tried to mimic. Obviously, not there yet :( https://www.interiorzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/black-kitchen-island-chairs.jpg

I would love to see where your project ends up with finishing. We are doing similar cabinets here and I could learn from you. And, guess, what? I'm building them myself! I can't even call myself a carpenter but I am 100% confident that I can make really nice frameless carcasses and walnut slab doors. I'll likely wait until spring or summer to finish the doors.

I've had issues with JuneKnow too- glad you set that one straight because comments like those are a big disservice. ANSWER THE QUESTION.

What countertops are you using? Best of luck.