Stripping kitchen cabinets - help

[t-dog]

Prior homeowner painted the kitchen cabinets white. The color is fine, but they did a bad job on the actual paint application and its bubbling, peeling now 2 years into my ownership of the house. Is this something that can be stripped off by me or am I being ambitious and I should just hire someone to come in and fix the problem? What does such a thing run generally - its a fairly small galley kitchen.

[kittensaver]

Yes, you can do it, but it will be long, messy and full of nasty toxins that burn skin if you go the chemical stripping route. If you sand, it will also be long and messy and full of nasty toxins that float in the air for you to breathe if you don't take proper precautions with a heavy-duty mask.

I'm a pretty hard-core DYI-er, and I say go out and at least get a quote. Look at the price, ask how long it will take a professional with the proper safety equipment to get it done, and then see if your cost (supplies, proper mask, equipment) plus your time outweighs the cost of shelling out for someone else who is (maybe?) better equipped than you are to get it done.

Good luck to you! :-)

[Loopdilou]

If I were going to do this, I'd probably purchase new doors and just refinish the rest.. the doors are the super obnoxious part.

[michelyn8]

Are you going to repaint or stain? If you're going to paint, I'd say DIY - sand them down enough to get a smooth surface and repaint. If you want stain, then get a few quotes and go with a professional.

[thyme4change]

the right music is key.......

LOL

[t-dog]

Thanks all - I plan to repaint and keep them white...just want to repair the bad job that was done. Loop, the kitchen is OLD...house built in 1957...not at all sure my doors are standard sizes and there is a series of small useless ones way above the sink (have to get a ladder to reach them) that can't be anything but custom. The paint is so tacky that my cat stood against one door and where his paw touched there were dent marks (that are now peeling) from his claws.

[kittensaver]

Well if your issue is layers of tacky paint that hasn't dried completely after two years then yeah - - you're gonna have to strip it back down to bare wood and start over. Anything else will simply cause the same problem to pop up again. Sorry :-(

[t-dog]

Kitten that is what I figured Not sure what the problem was (i.e. wet weather application, wrong paint type, etc) but I am sick of it and its starting to look really awful.

[Wizard of Id]

Sept 18, 2012 14:15:10 GMT -5 kittensaver said:

I'm a pretty hard-core DYI-er, and I say go out and at least get a quote. Look at the price, ask how long it will take a professional with the proper safety equipment to get it done, and then see if your cost (supplies, proper mask, equipment) plus your time outweighs the cost of shelling out for someone else who is (maybe?) better equipped than you are to get it done.

Good luck to you! :-)

[kittensaver]

Sept 18, 2012 15:27:35 GMT -5 t-dog said:

Kitten that is what I figured Not sure what the problem was (i.e. wet weather application, wrong paint type, etc) but I am sick of it and its starting to look really awful.

The problem is usually a combination of both plus time . Latex over oil over latex over latex over primer over latex over primer over stain over - over - over is sooooo typical for older houses. Yuck. Good luck on your financial vs. DIY time analysis, and know that when it's finally done it will look great!

[tskeeter]

Tdog, my guess is that the bubbling is caused by either paint that is incompatible with the underlying finish, or paint that was applied over dirt and grease. In either case, the situation might make it easier to remove the paint.

Finish removal is done using one of three processes, or a combination of three processes. Chemical stripping, sanding, or heat and scrape. Since the paint is soft, I'd avoid sanding. the soft paint will clog the sandpaper every couple of minutes, a real pain. Considering that you have a small, galley kitchen, I'd opt for heating the paint to soften it, then scraping the paint off the cabinets. Then you don't have to deal with strippers slopping all over the place, the fumes, etc. (Heating the paint may cause some fumes, if you let the paint get too hot, but it will be less of an issue than using chemical strippers and solvents.)

I'd remove the doors and door hardware so I could strip the doors on an easy to reach horizontal surface. The cabinet boxes will need to be stripped in place.

Once the cabinets are stripped, I'd wash them down with TSP or something similar (talk to the folks at a paint store about what to use), to remove accumulated grease and dirt. It doesn't matter if they look clean. Clean them anyway.

Then give them a quick sanding to smooth any raised grain, etc.

To prevent future bubbling due to incompatible layers of finish, I'd seal the cabinets with shellac. Shellac is a fast drying natural finishing product that is inert with respect to other types of finishes. As a result, it is often used as a barrier layer between different types of finish, or when the solvent in a finish will dissolve and smear previously applied coats of finish.

The best way to get a decent finish is to spray the paint onto the cabinets. Brush painting will almost always leave brush marks in the paint. This probably means that you'll need to hire a painter to spray the cabinets.

A last comment. Remember that your house is old enough that it is almost a given that it has lead paint on things. I'd test before I started so that I knew what materials I was dealing with and could take appropriate steps. You need to test not only the white paint on the cabinets, but any layers of paint that are underneath the white. My guess is that the white was put on the cabinets in preparation for selling the house. In that case, there is little chance that it contains lead. Any paint underneath the white, however .......

[thyme4change]

Are these the type of cabinets you have?



I have these in my old bathroom, and I love them. They are the last little original piece of our house (it was remodeled in the early 70's.) I asked my contractor if he could find someone that could strip them and repaint them, and he told me it might be cheaper to have someone recreate them. Because they don't have any embellishments, it is not a lot of labor. They are also made out of pretty inexpensive wood. So, you could get a couple of estimates.

[8 Bit WWBG]

It sounds like you should just have the cat paw strategically at the doors, at which point you should be able to tear the paint right off!

I will never ever EVER try to strip a finish in place myself again. We tried to do some banisters and it was a bloody mess. We had to keep our pets confined for a week while that nasty stuff was still on the wood (since after 2 or 3 hours of work, we'd maybe successfully removed the stain from 1/10th of the area) and I think we ended up finishing dirt INTO the wood in some areas. We later met a handyman who specialized in that kind of work who took the railings to his workshop where he was able to blast the finish off safely, and stain them the new color.

It is NOT WORTH doing it yourself unless you have the equipment and skill. Get someone or a team who will come in, barricade the area, blast it all off, and be done with it.

[kittensaver]

Wow tskeeter, I admire you for being able to get it done with just one method! I've NEVER been able to do that. I've always had to start with the heat gun and scraping, and then remove the remaining residue with stripping gel/chemicals. Skinky, messy and nasty - - and you're absolutely right about the lead issue. Do pay serious attention to that part, tdog. You REALLY need to protect yourself from lead (says the person who at the time didn't know any better, got VERY sick and spent 8 months enduring oral chelation therapy to "get the lead out").

[t-dog]

Thyme - no my doors do have some embellishment wtih a raised outer edge compared to a flat deeper set inside panel. I am sure I am not describing it well and I still don't know how to post pictures so I can't just show you.

Tskeeter - thanks for the information - that was awesome. The paint on the actual cabinet box seems ok - its all the doors that are peeling around the edges.

[t-dog]

Kitten - that sounds awful - glad you are all recovered!

[tskeeter]

Sept 18, 2012 16:10:58 GMT -5 t-dog said:

Thyme - no my doors do have some embellishment wtih a raised outer edge compared to a flat deeper set inside panel. I am sure I am not describing it well and I still don't know how to post pictures so I can't just show you.

Tskeeter - thanks for the information - that was awesome. The paint on the actual cabinet box seems ok - its all the doors that are peeling around the edges.

Tdog, makes me wonder if someone sanded the doors before painting. It is possible that they created a sharp edge on the doors. The sharp edge causes a thin spot in the paint. At just the point where the finish get the most wear and tear and is the most prone to chipping To avoid this thin spot in the finish, woodworkers round over any sharp edges with a piece of sandpaper before applying the finish.

One option would be to just refinish the doors. That would certainly be easier than refinishing the entire set of cabinets.

However, you talked about soft paint. And I assume that's an issue with the cabinet boxes as well as the doors.

[tskeeter]

Wow tskeeter, I admire you for being able to get it done with just one method! I've NEVER been able to do that.

Nope, kittensaver, not that talented. Usually takes a bit of sandpaper or a bit of stripper and a brass bristle brush after the scraper. But, a lot less sanding and stripping than if you don't heat and scrape. Since Tdog is planning to paint the cabinets again, I didn't consider getting them in stain ready condition to be a requirement. I thought the pre-finish sanding step would help remove some of the remaining paint residue and that would be adequate for a painted cabinet..

[t-dog]

Soft paint is only on the doors - the cabinet boxes seem ok.

[Deleted]

Get a quote for new cabinets!

Before moving back to the house I thought I would re-paint or re-surface the original cabinets. Then we realized that we would never be able to get rid of the mold smell in the cabinets because the area around the sink had been leaking for a couple of years. And there's no way we could have only two cabinets around the sink replaced and not the whole set. Add in the holes and the fingernail damage through the veneer and we knew we should just bite the bullet and replace them. We got the quote for new cabinets and I thought it was going to be a lot more than it was.

[Sammy]

My husband pulled the doors off the cabinets and moved them outside to sand them down to the bare wood. Then he sanded the frames. That was a huge messy job. I covered every surface in the kitchen and blocked the doorways with plastic to keep the sawdust from the rest of the house. We put a large fan in front of the kitchen door facing out and it blew a lot of the sawdust out of the room.

Taking the doors outside and laying them across saw horses to strip, or sand them, makes the job much easier.

I wish we didn't have to do the sanding because stripping would have been easier in as far as doing small sections at a time and keeping the mess contained.

There are stripping agents that are far safer to use and almost odor free and drip free. Last time I stripped paint off a piece of furniture I left the stripper on until it pickled then scraped the bubbled paint off the piece doing a section at a time.

[Bluerobin]

I did the stripping thing a few years back. That was when we had good chemicals, with cancer causing agents in them. Now, they might not work so well. It was not that hard. The easiest was the doors, which you could take off and lay flat. The hardest were the parts that stayed on the walls. Sanding might be easier, depending on how much it is blistering. Definitely get a power tool to sand.

[InsertCoolName]

Might want to have a lead test done. Paint made before 1978, I believe contained lead. It's very bad stuff when you go to sanding/removing it.

[Deleted]

Look for a Dip & Strip place if you just need the doors done. They keep all the harsh chemicals at their place! You take off the doors & hardware, drop them off and a couple weeks later you get them back. I'd see what the wood underneath is before deciding how to finish them.

[Bluerobin]

Rock It has a good idea. Those places still have the good stuff for stripping paint. One word of caution, if the wood is laminated, you don't want to dip them.

[t-dog]

Dip & Strip - wow, I won't tell you what my first thought about such a place was!!
Never heard of such a business model. Another thing on the amazingly long list of things to research.

[Works4me]

If you decide to do it, use only the best - Wagner Heat Gun and/or Jasco Original or Regular Stripper. Buy a good quality putty knife with a sharp edge and a cheap paintbrush. The danger with the heat gun is burning yourself but some even have a scraper built in.

Wear long sleves, have lots of rags and only use high quality Chemical Resistant gloves or the Jasco will literally take your skin off and/or melt the gloves.

FYI - the Original/Regular
Jasco is THE BEST - have tried others and none work as well. Just brush it on and wait for it to bubble up then scrape with putty knife, wipe putty knife onto rag, discard rag and do again.

Have never been ale to find a dip tank or Dip and Strip when needed but would love to try it.