Laundry room cabinet re-finishing

Wow...it's been awhile since I've updated the blog. I'll try to catch up.

Sometime last year I completed the re-finishing of the base cabinet for the laundry room. I decided I need to get the collection of cabinets out of the upstairs bedroom, as they are taking up too much room. The laundry room has 2 upper cabinets, while the craft/hobby room has 3 upper cabinets and 2 base cabinets. I decided to finish off the laundry room.

The cabinets are in decent shape for use in the laundry and craft rooms. I wanted to stain and re-finish them because the oak was stained with a reddish dye. This made each room look dated. Not that the '80s weren't a totally righteous decade, but they just don't fit my taste.

Re-finishing cabinets isn't the funnest thing in the world, which is why it takes me forever. I start by sanding off the old finish, which takes about 3 hours per cabinet (the trim work on the front of the cabinets takes forever to sand). Then each cabinet and door gets a coat of wood conditioner, followed by 3 coats of tint. The tint needs to be wiped off after 20 minutes. After the tint cures, each cabinet and door sides get 3 coats of sealer, which requires sanding with 200 grit sandpaper between each coat. See why it takes me so long?

The upper cabinets required additional work. The original cabinets had messy undersides, which will be seen when they are on the wall. So 3 sides had to be cut down flush with the bottom so that a thin piece of oak could be attached and stained the same color.

Here's how the short upper cabinet started out:The center cabinet had the same unfinished bottom:

The cabinets got hauled outside where Zac and I did all the cutting on sawhorses to avoid any damage to other surfaces. A thin piece of oak was trimmed, glued, and nailed to the bottom and sides. The sides had fake veneer that couldn't be stained, so I roughed that surface with the sander and glued the real wood to it, followed by nails. Oh, and I found that vacuuming the cabinets with the soft brush attachment (for curtains) works well for getting the majority of the sawdust off of the surfaces. After vacuuming I followed up with a tack cloth.

The upper cabinet with the new sides and bottom attached:

The room that will be my future craft/hobby/sewing room is currently my cabinet re-finishing room. This keeps everything clean while the various coats are drying. The old laundry room counter top is what is resting on top of the sawhorses, and makes a perfect wood-staining worksurface.

The yellow Post-Its are status notes for each door and cabinet so that I can keep track of where each one is at in the process.

Here is the completed and stained center upper cabinet. In the photo below it is upside down, so the top is the finished bottom.

Here's a comparison of before and after. The "before" is one of the craft room cabinets yet to be done. *sigh*

Zac finished hanging the cabinets. The scene before this one was me sitting on the washer with the short cabinet on my head while he put the supporting screws in place.

The cabinets are in! And no one was killed or seriously injured in the process.

Now the upper cabinets match the base cabinet that was finished, oh, forever ago.
The next step was to install hardware. I found some drawer pulls in oil rubbed bronze at Home Depot that matched the new doorknobs well. And it was the 10 pack, so I saved a ton. Do you know how expensive some drawer knobs can be? Yeah, look them up sometime. I've found some that are $50 EACH! I have 18 knobs to put on between the two rooms, so that's not happening.

Upper cabinets with pulls installed:

And the base cabinet completed. The left and center top "drawer" blocks are fixed in place as that's where the laundry room sink will go (right where the mysterious glob is in the photo). The left upper drawer is still functional as a drawer.

Now it's time to order the laundry room sink and faucet. The sink will be a black top-mount sink and the faucet will be something in oil rubbed bronze to match all of the hardware. We are also going to attach a bar to the side of the upper center cabinet and attach it to the wall to hang clothes on for drying. Then we can stop using our canopy bed as a clothes line.

In other laundry room news...

Opposite of the base cabinet is the door to the water heater closet. We needed a home for the iron and an ironing board, so Zac found a cool in-door kit and installed it in this door. From the front you can't really tell what magic lies inside:

Open the door and there's a cool little cubby where a fold-out ironing board and the iron live.

There's a little lamp (because ironing in the dark can only lead to disaster) and a plug for the iron. The plug operates on a timer.

And when you open the door you can see how compact the iron and ironing board storage area is.