Kitchen cabinet doors and front door refinishing

[Norman Hein]

We bought a used house and have questions/problems
with the kitchen cabinets and front door. The finish
on the cabinets (and around the wood stainded base
boards) is wearing away, splochy, no longer smooth
and uniform nor shiny. Lemon oil only makes the
doors shiny. I tried applying a matching stain with
finish, but, this did not appear to have any effect.
What can be done to the cabinet doors and baseboards
to rejuvinate the old finish?

The problem with the front door is similar in that
the finish/varnish is worn away. The inside of the
door also has scratches in the wood from a dog.
What can be done to refinish/rejuvinate this door?

[Terry Alexander]

Norman,
We just finished with a project similar to yours. Sorry to give you bad news, but the only way we found to get a really nice finish was to totally strip off the old varnish, re-sand the doors and then apply stain and varnish again. You can use most any of the strippers available, but we really like the brand “Bix”. What a lot of people don’t know, is that once you apply the stripper, let it work and then scrap off the varnish, you need to wipe the remaining varnish off with lacquer thinner. CAUTION, the stripper and lacquer thinner are very flammable.
Hope this helps,
TA

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