Matching Cabinet Colors:
Get A Stripper

Question:

I have 15 year old oak kitchen cabinet doors, which have gone a honey colour over the years. Is there any product I can buy to remove the urethane coating, or is the only method to sand the doors. I am trying to match them to two new oak cabinets that I have bought.

Bren Mc.

Reply:

I just spent most of the weekend watching my girlfriend strip.

I mean, strip varnish.

There are numerous different chemical paint/finish strippers on the market. But there is a problem... your doors are almost certainly glued together, and too much stripper will weaken the glue. You can chemically strip your cabinets and doors, but you don't want to leave the chemical on the glued areas too long. I don't know how long "too long" is. I suppose the approach is to apply the chemical and start scrubbing right away and wash the gunk off real quick. A second coat may be required to remove spots not softened by the first coat. My experience has been that if you pour on the stripper and let it soak a long time, a half hour or so, you'll hear snapping sounds as the glue comes undone.

But the real trick to your project is this: how do you match the stain? We've been tinkering around with different blends of Minwax stains for the past couple of months, and we have yet to arrive at a color that matches the old millwork. I have never achieved perfect color matching with stain. I prefer the idea of contrasting colors, personally, but that may look odd in some kitchens.

If it was me, I'd strip the new cabinets and make them match the old ones. Less work is better than more work.

Without an accurate and stable comparison color sample, it's hard to be certain that the color of something has really changed over the years. It's possible that the old cabinets have experienced a discoloring of the urethane, but it could also be the wood or the stain that has changed over the years. The new cabinets could be identical models, from the same manufacturer, with the same finish materials, and they still may not match older cabinets even if no fading occurred. Controlling colors in manufacturing is a HUGE problem, as I discovered in an automotive industry consulting job years ago. The auto industry spends loads of money on special test equipment and procedures just so all the various parts on the inside of your car have the same color, year after year. My experience is that the building materials industry is not very concerned with maintaining accurate color matching over time.

Bruce W. Maki, Editor.