Whitewashed maple is very 80’s. If you want that look, be sure to view kitchens of that era to know what it will look like as it ages. It tends to be pink/peach. Personally, I prefer no stain whatsoever, and to let maple mellow out to it’s natural color.

Maple takes stain very poorly and IMO should not be stained just finished natural with a really good finish that does not yellow . I have had birseye maple pieces from Itally they do a fabulous job but they use colored acrylic varnish to get the depth of color.I personally like wood left in its natural color almost always.

Thank you for your feedback! Will Maple with a natural finish be anything similar to the photo I posted?

Maple will yellow over time unless your finish has a UV blocker in it. Oil will help it yellow, but some acrylic finishes will block UV to some extent. Maple doesn’t absorb stain well so a wash may be best for it (since it’s close to a paint that sits on the surface). Your inspiration pic does look very pink. Is that the look you want? It is very 80s but maybe that’s coming back in style? Best thing to do is get a scrap piece of wood and try a bunch of different finishes.

You should be working with your cabinet finisher to achieve the look you want. They should be creating samples for your review. It should not be your job to figure this out.

And you need a cabinet finisher, not a builder accustomed to a quick wipe of Minwax with a clear sprayed on top.

Why have you chosen maple?

Thanks, all. Maple is the wood species that’s commonly used in many custom homes in InDiana (where we’re building). We are meeting with our builder tomorrow on this topic and @PPF you’re absolutely right, it shouldn’t be our job to figure this out. Thanks for pointing that out.

Regarding the pictures posted, yes that style is definitely back in. That specific kitchen uses white oak with a clear finish, and we are just trying to achieve that with Maple. Not sure we’ll be able to but again, we will have the builder consult with the finisher and provide samples.

I appreciate everyone’s feedback very much. -C

You cannot begin to make maple look like bleached white oak. It never will, no matter what you do. Minwax is not even a good homeowner level product. No real experienced professional would ever use it. You have a series of disasters that will result in a major disaster of a result if you stick with these amateurs. Fire them ASAP.

If you want the white oak look shown, you need to find the local 50K custom cabinet maker who uses white oak. He should show you he can do that finish on the front end. Because he should already have samples of past work that show it. There will be no minwax anywhere in his shop. Take that to the bank.

Maple looks like maple. Nothing anyone will do will make it look like white oak. Furthermore, your photos in your OP look like rift sawn white oak that has perhaps been cerused. Big upcharges for both. So even if you did buy cabinets in regular white oak, they would not look like the photos in your OP. In any case, you are buying maple. You are wanting the impossible for it to look like your OP photos. Maple is lovely on its own, and as already mentioned does not take stain well.

" Our builder is using Minwax "

Builder, not cabinet maker @Cabinet Workshop, and I agree that you will never get this to match. Maple is typically a painted or left natural product as it tends to get very blotchy when attempting to stain.

ABSOLUTE NO to maple. ( perfectly fine for the boxes ) Indiana is a part of the USA. Not Australia. ...or Africa. White oak is plentiful in this country..

Maple is a clear coat or PAINTED. The other choice is to be incredibly disappointed with your new home. Emphasize "incredibly"

The species is hard as a rock, will blotch with wood tone stain, and you will never get rid of pink and yellow in the wood.

Get an independent KITCHEN designer on board - one with an equally good custom cabinet source. Often the look you want is best achieved with a factory finish, from a higher end cabinet source. Get an interior designer too.

Why? Neither your builder, or your local guy using "Minwax on maple" are designers. If you want the look of the inspo's you are posting? That is the way to get it. A very good "team".

I would add that you need not match ALL cabinetry in a home to a kitchen finish. Sometimes paint IS the answer. ..Get a team together. It is the best money you can spend.

Feeling brave? Post the house plan: )

This is the kitchen in my first apartment. It was about 42 square feet total with a 6'7" ceiling so no great pictures. No, you could not open any two things at the same time.

These are Wood-Mode cabinets in maple with some sort of stained finish in probably some kind of conversion varnish, but it is Not natural finish, I know that.. Looks pretty even to me, I don't know how they did it. They definitely skewed pink when new, but the house was build in 1840 and I lived in the back parlor which had a pink ceiling. I don't hate pink.

There was no kitchen forum in 1997 to tell me how terribly maple would take a finish so I didn't know any better. The kitchen is still there because I watch the unit get sold every so often.

I had natural, clear coated maple cabs in the kitchen of our previous home. They held up beautifully, in the 36 years we lived there. However, in no way did they look like the white oak in your inspiration pics, nor could they. Different species, with very different graining and appearance. And, maple yellows with age.

There are so many experts on Maple staining here who have never actually touched a can of stain or finished Maple. Including Creative Cabinets, which is a fake business that Verbo created to lend credence to his posts.

Unfortunately, I suspect your contractor is also someone who may not really understand the task at hand. Soft Maple will get paper white after a single bleaching and hard Maple lightens almost as easily but will not usually get paper white. The blotchiness of Maple is not as problematic with whitewashing stains, as whitewashing stains are often not penetrating stains.

Here are some suggestions from someone who often whitens Maple. What I use really depends on the piece of wood I am using. Maple can get “dirty” it can have lots of small pitch pockets that make it look like someone took a black marker and made dozens of small black marks on every door, or it can be really beautifully grained.

Test the Minwax on some drawer backs and see what it looks like. White stains are mostly going to sit on top of the wood like paint because wood doesn’t love to drink in titanium oxide. It may look fine.

If I was finishing cabinets I would just paint it. One of the easiest and most common ways to whitewash cabinets is with a toner coat. You literally just go buy a white coating and the same clear coating and mix one part white to ten parts clear and spray it (play with the ratio to get it right). You can also use a clear base and colorant. If you are happy with the look after a single coat, then switch to clear, if not add another coat. Any experienced sprayer should be able to spray a toner coat.

Maple bleaches easily and beautifully. I use a lye etcher and a 35% hydrogen peroxide bleach, but with Maple you can honestly get away with household bleach. Tamar over at 3x3 customs has a bleaching test video…I would argue that my results are slightly better than hers, but a bit more difficult. There are plenty of videos on bleaching wood and it is not difficult.

Finally, if you are concerned about your contractor’s ability to achieve good results, which may be a fair assessment given that he only uses Minwax products, investigate Rubio Monocoat hard wax oils. The village idiot could apply Rubio Monocoat and get flawless results. Hard wax oils are a strong and durable finish that are also infinitely repairable. If you get a stain, just sand it out and apply the hard wax oil again, you will not be able to find the repair. However, over time hard wax oils get pulled into the wood and so every five years or so you have to add a coat of renewer. This is simply wiping the cabinets down with the renewal oil. Hard wax oils are not quite as durable as conversion varnish or 2k polys, but again, they are repairable unlike those.

If your Maple is pulling pink, which they sometimes do, add a mint white precolor to the Rubio. If staining or painting add a small shot of green colorant to the coating (test results first). On the color wheel greens are opposite of reds and so they neutralize red colors.

Good luck

-—

Thank you @Bry911. I think my post was misconstrued by some as well. I’m not necessarily trying to white wash the maple, and my builder never suggested that. They gave us a wheel of Minwax stains and asked which color we liked best. They said they’d get as close as possible to our inspiration photos and have our cabinet finisher test it out before we actually approved the selection. To be fair, we have just started the cabinet process with them. I’m not sure if they’re even using Minwax or just using it as a point of reference to get an idea of the stain color we’re trying to achieve. I was trying to do some research on my own as the custom build process can be an overwhelming one. I appreciate your transparency and will be using it when I speak to them today. Hopefully some of the commentators on here can take a page from your book ;)

Yes, my cabinet maker does not actually use Minwax, they make custom conversion varnishes, but they will use Minwax as an accessible set of standard stain colors for clients to reference, and then they create samples from there and tweak the shade as needed.

I would simplify everything/ remove the guessing and do as shown below : with the linear grain species showing up w so many cabinet makers/ attention to finishes as well , there are good options and easy to achieve a similar look. I dont much care for the bleached attempt on maple...and look at how yellow that center panel is on the pantry doors..... the beautiful grain w lighter finshes [ or natural] on quartersawn is so readily available now.

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Get white oak who cares what the other home owners are using white oak is what you want if that is the look you are going for. I agree get to a good cabinet maker who understands finishing to what the client wants.