I am glad to hear the feedback that the procedure worked. It has been over a year and everything is holding up great. I went down to Home depot and bought thin aluminum angle iron and sanded it to make it look like brushed nickel 1 inch X inch � mitered the edges and trimmed the bottom of the cabinets. Ill post pictures � it looks awesome. I even had my house appraised and the appraiser added the value of the cabinets as brand new as all of the other models in the neighborhood have oak cabinets. Anyways to answer your question, and I am not a wood expert I just posted my procedure because it worked for my application and saved a lot of money and steps that the "pros" would suggest What I found is that the pores in the wood will absorb paint in my naked/unfinished cabinets thus requiring primer. Originally I premiered one of my bathroom cabinets and the primer seemed to create a rough surface and fill in the wood grain. It turned out just okay. I finally took oak door in my kitchen and tested it without the primer but sand down the glaze on the door. I didn�t get crazy with it I just hit it with the rotary sander, sanded the detail with the sanding sponge, cleaned and painted. I then compared the door primed and not primed and found that the not primed looked significant better and more wood like, meaning it was hard to tell it was painted. And a year in a half later the paint has held up to usually kitchen ware and tear. So to answer your question what I would do is take a door and prime the back and not the front then paint both and compare � whichever one turns out better go with it. But in my opinion if you knock off the glaze and paint following my procedure you will find that this will be more wood like with fewer steps involved with great results. Tom

I can’t believe it’s been 11 years since your reveal, redroze. It is a classic. I used to post as budge1. I was away for awhile but we had a bit of a Disaster a few years ago and had to redo the whole house. Gardenweb was invaluable thru that process but I still regret not being able to have my results posted in the FKB. That always seemed like the real finish line.

G & S Floor Service - Will Nutmeg come out orangey on Red Oak? My husband would like to go lighter and doesn't mind a golden or reddish tone as he likes the look of a cherry woodd color but I really want more of a brown. Would Medium Brown work well? I would go for Jacobean but my husband is averse to how dark it is. He would probably be happy with chestnut or provincial and a cinnamon colored floor. :-) I would truly appreciate hearing from you as I have to give my floor guy 4 choices of stains to try out today!

I know this is older post, but also know photos are helpful. We used provincial on our red oak. Pics are with all lights out on snowy day (but lots of lights because blinds are not up yet). Its a satin finish, but as yiu can see when light hits it still reflects light. Overall we are very happy. Rich color that isnt too dark or too light (and changes with lighing). No orange - rich brown/golden brown/dark brown are color variations in the wood. waterbased poly.