I want to stain my ugly honey oak cabinets to look rustic. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

 

What is your definition of rustic?

 

Are you prepared for the task of stripping your existing cabinets? You can't just put on stain. The current protective finish like polyurethane must be removed first.

 

#1, Are you 100% sure the doors and boxes are real wood?
Willing to spend many days sanding down to bare wood, and dealing with all the dust in the house?
Got a place to work on the doors away from the kitchen?
Depending on the look your going for it may be better to just buy new unfinished doors then just have to deal with the box frames.
Got a picture of the cabinets?

 

I want them to have a barnwood look. And I cant figure out how to put pic on here from my gallery.

 

Click the go advanced button then try to use the paper clip icon to attach a file.

 

I cant find the advanced button

 

Under the Quick Reply box, there's 2 yellow buttons. The second one says "Go Advanced". Click on that one.

 

Pic of my cabinets

 

I agree with Joe on this one. Would a much easier on you nerves to just but new doors and refinish the way you want.

Those doors look great. I would hate to see the nice finish ruined.

 

I've got almost identical cabinets- wish mine looked that good!
Steve

 

I think cabinets good great also but I don't look at them.

 

My concern is that most people are not accustomed to hard physical work. Sanding down the doors and cabinets to remove all the old finish will be laborious and tedious. Leave a little bit of poly in the nooks and crannies and it will show when you apply the new stain. So, watch some videos and do some reading to insure that you are fully up to the task. Once you start there really isn't any going back.

 

When removing poly you are almost always better off starting with a chemical stripper. For what you want to end up with I think I'd buy new doors and refinish or paint the cabinet carcass.

 

Better idea-
Swap or sell them to somebody who wants good condition honey-maple cabinets-
Then get rustic cabinets.

I'd take some photos and put an add up on craigslist...

 

Hire someone to dismount the doors and take to their shop and stain as you wish. Next, they will seal off the kitchen to sand and apply 2 coats of stain and a finish. Last, remount the doors. Trust me on this....

Or......leave them alone, they look fine.

 

While they can be stripped and stained a different color, I'm not convinced you can take those doors and make them look like barnwood.

 

[QUOTE]I'm not convinced you can take those doors and make them look like barnwood./QUOTE]

I have to agree. It would take a custom mix and a lot of stain to give the look you seek. It seems the majority think this is not a DIY or you should have it done professionally .

 

The barnwood color shouldn't be too hard to duplicate but the look of the grain wouldn't be right.

 

They have all sorts of faux paint and techniques nowadays. Maybe it would be easier to do that than refinish and stain. You could use a browish gray color first, distress it, and follow with a whitewash, for one.
Marksr may have more info on this than me!

 

While we studied faux painting back when I was an apprentice, I've done very little of it since. Back then they didn't even have the term faux painting yet and each technique was called by the name that described it. That said, faux painting might get the look you desire although when I think of barn wood I also think of the texture and open grain that goes with it.

 

I'll double on the advice stripping commercially-applied urethane varnish off that type of cabinets is a really tough physical job. You really need to start with a chemical stripper, but the good ones are now not available to residential users. The non-toxic/citrus stuff does not work well on this type of finish. At most it makes it a little gummy which makes further scraping and sanding a nightmare. Best to remove it with a methylene chloride based stripping product if you can find it. It is banned in some states and all of the big name retailers no longer sell it due to idiots who used it in enclosed spaces without protective equipment, died and their families filed lawsuits.

That leaves you with mechanically sanding and scraping all the urethane off every nook and cranny of the ogees and stepped round overs. If you're not really careful with it, you'll round over all the machining detail and the job will look very amateurish. That type of oak finish also has a pore filler applied that you will never be able to remove. This makes the oak smooth rather than the open textured grain you see in weathered oak.

If you're up to the job, go for it, but before you get started understand this will be a ton of really hard work.

 

To take an easy route, you can try a gel stain right on top of the existing cabinet finish, similar to this technique:
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But it may or may not turn out that great. I would probably try it on the inside of one of the cabinet doors first.

Or Minwax polyshades stain.

Note: I'm an amateur.

 

If you're really bent on doing this, I would suggest a professional cabinet maker to have it dipped stripped in a chemical solution.