I have new medium cherry cabinets in a new home that we have just purchased.  I would like them to be much darker.  Is it possible to do this without refinishing the cabinets?  What wood for flooring would you suggest to complement/contrast the darker cherry cabinets?

My answer:

To change the color of cabinets usually means you would need to refinish the cabinets to some degree, depending on their condition. Since yours are new and in good shape, you could clean the surfaces and apply a polyurethane finish with an integral stain over the finish you already have. Minwax Polyshades is one of these products. This would mean that you would not have to strip and sand the existing doors and cabinets. So if that’s what you mean by “refinish,” then the answer is, “No,” you won’t have to refinish new cabinets to change the color. You’ll merely have to add a colored finish on top of the existing finish. Just be sure to follow the directions exactly. Don’t skip any steps. You might try samples of colors on the backs (insides) of the doors before doing any of the fronts. That way you’ll see what you’ll get in an inconspicuous place.

 As far as wood flooring choices go, take a look at the medium to lighter woods, like white oak or even reclaimed heart pine. Don’t go dark with the floor if you are darkening your cabinets. Try for a nice, eye-pleasing contrast between the woods. I’m not sure where you’re located and what is available. But with the smooth cherry cabinets, you could select a flooring that has an “active” and interesting grain pattern, if you like. If oak is too grainy, take a look at rift sawn and quarter sawn oak before rejecting it. Normal, plain-sawn oak can have arch-shaped grain patterns that some folks don’t care for. Rift-sawn and quarter-sawn oak has a beautiful straight grain look and accents of what are called medullary rays, or pith rays. Rift sawn oak is one of my favorites. My mantel and adjoining cabinets in my family room are built of this wood.

 I hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

 Joyce L. asked:

Thank you for the wonderful site! I am about to “redo” my kitchen. We will be installing light coloured tiles in the kitchen and have new oak floors in the rest of the house. The cabinets are of course the original goldish coloured, raised panel oak cabinets from the 80′s. The problem is that the finish on some of the cabinets almost looks new while other cabinet doors, especially those around the sink and stove area, are in dire need of refinishing. I’m afraid that if I try to refinish some of the cabinets they will not match the existing 30 year old wood/stain of the others. And refinishing all of the cabinets seems like too daunting a task. I’m almost afraid to ask this question but…I have heard that a grain filler can be applied to all the cabinets and then they could be …primed and painted (maybe white, I’m thinking country blue). There seems to be alot of controversy over painting wood, especially oak due to the pores. I would appreciate your advice. 

Joyce – I so glad you like the site. Thank you for the compliment.

I’m not familiar with grain filler, but it sounds like a risky way to go. I would imagine it might be hard to control the outcome and potentially require a lot of sanding. You are correct that painting oak is not necessarily a great thing to do, since the “pores”, or open portions of the grain will show through strongly. But, believe it or not, there are actually new cabinets sold that are exactly that, painted oak. The texture of the oak is prominent and it’s part of the desired “look.” I personally do not like that look. But that is a matter of taste and you might feel differently. That’s why Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors. We don’t all like the same thing.

A big problem with painting cabinets in a kitchen is that the painted surface will not be as durable as if it were painted in a cabinet shop or factory. The manufacturers of the better cabinets don’t actually use a paint. They use a conversion varnish which cures to a much tougher finish than regular paint. You can wipe it down many, many times with no damage. Regular paint will wear through on your most often used cabinets.

I have two suggestions for you. One is to take the doors and drawer fronts off and take them to a cabinet shop and have them paint them there using conversion varnish. You could then paint the cabinet frames with paint of the same color without removing them from the wall. That’s the part of the cabinet that gets the least wear, so regular paint should work just fine.

The second suggestion would be good if you really would prefer the natural wood look and don’t care to paint over the oak. You can not just refinish teh worn doors. They will look too different from the originals since the finish on the originals has probably yellowed over the years. You need to do all of them.

Look at a product called Formby’s Paint & Poly Remover, or similar polyurethane removers. These products will easily strip away the polyurethane finish without too much effort. There is no need to sand through the original finish. This product dissolves it and you simply scrape it off or wipe it off with steel wool. It’s available in an aeresol to help strip the areas with curves, grooves, or tight corners that might be hard to get into with a brush. Next, you clean the surface with a Poly & Paint Remover Wash to remove any residue of finish. Once that is done, you can apply a new polyurethane finish and the cabinets should look like new. If you have any rough spots, you may need to do a bit of light sanding.

If you do the refinishing yourself, take the doors and drawer fronts off. That way you can spread them out in the garage and work more comfortably than if you tried working on them in place. You might even try refinishing the doors and drawer fronts only and see if you really need to do the cabinet frames or not. If you have full-overlay, Euro-style cabinets, not much of it will show when the doors are closed. You may have to do any exposed cabinet sides, though.

I hope this helps. Good luck and let me know how it turns out.

I always look forward to answering questions. Please send them along as a comment here or drop me a note at info@designingyourperfecthouse.com.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

And just what’s so appealing about a Sub Zero? Obviously it is a very good product. They have great features such as two individual compressors, one for the freezer side and one for the refrigerator side. Many of their super deluxe models have specialty features you probably didn’t even know you needed until they told you. But I think the single most valuable feature of a Sub Zero is the fact that it is “cabinet depth.” This means the front of the refrigerator sits even with the face of the lower cabinets and front edge of the countertop. It doesn’t stick out several inches like standard refrigerators and look like a big bulky box in the kitchen. With a cabinet panel installed on the doors of the Sub Zero, the bulkiest object in the kitchen, the refrigerator, can take a less intrusive position in your kitchen and give the entire kitchen a more unitized and cleaner look.

Sub Zero isn’t the only manufacturer of cabinet depth refrigerators. GE Monogram, Liebherr, LG, and a few other manufacturers now offer cabinet depth refrigerators. However, cabinet depth refrigerators are usually fairly expensive and many people feel they lack enough depth inside to be as useful to them as they might prefer.

Is there another solution? Fortunately there is. If the layout of the kitchen and the rooms the kitchen adjoins will allow it, a recess can be created in the wall behind the refrigerator to allow a standard depth refrigerator to be pushed back further than normal. A six inch deep recess in the wall (only behind the refrigerator and not behind the other cabinets) should allow you to tuck the unit back and keep the refrigerator door approximately even with the base cabinets. Choose a refrigerator that allows you to put cabinet panels on the front and install vertical cabinet panels on each side of the space for the refrigerator to create an alcove for the refrigerator. When you slide the fridge into place, it will be nearly identical in appearance to the expensive cabinet depth variety. You can get the good look of a built in while keeping the interior depth of a standard refrigerator and save a few thousand dollars in the process.

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    I often discuss this issue with my clients. My feeling is that there needs to be some color distinction between the flooring and the cabinetry so that the cabinets don’t look like the floor is simply wrapping itself up the walls. After all, one is the floor and the other is essentially furniture and they should express themselves differently. I would suggest that there is no rule about which wood is the lighter or the darker.

    But I would also say that you need to consider the grain of both woods. This characteristic of the wood is often overlooked. If your flooring has a busy or strong grain, like oak, hickory, or even an antique pine, a smoother grained wood, like cherry or clear alder would be best for the cabinets. This will keep you from being overwhelmed with too much visual activity in the wood grain. I also think that the flooring is the place for the strong grained wood and not the cabinets.

    In my book, Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect, I discuss this very issue. Here’s a photo of a kitchen where I used cumaru teak for the flooring, with a fairly strong grain, and quarter-sawn oak for the cabinetry. Oak is normally a pronounced grain when plain sawn, but when rift or quarter sawn, the grain is smoother and much more refined. The combination worked out very nicely.

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    I have a client who recently moved in to her new home. While chatting with her today, one of the items she mentioned as being particularly thoughtful in the design were the shelves in her food pantry. I was happy to hear her other comments about the livability of the entire design of the house, but I was struck that even a small item like pantry shelves held a high value in how the house felt and the overall comfort of living in it.

    Her point was that the decision we made to make the pantry shelves shallow was ideal. The distance from the front edge to the back edge is only about twelve inches. Because cans and boxes of food are not very big, had we made the shelves deeper, small items would eventually get pushed to the back of the shelves and become hidden behind other items. Shallow shelves let the cans and boxes show as if “on display” and make it much easier to find what you want. A few deeper shelves are also a good idea since you will also be storing larger items, such as six packs of soda and that giant bag of chips for watching the ball game. But most of the shelves should be shallow to give you the most benefit.

    My client’s comment points out that the little things add up to be large in importance when you are Designing Your Perfect House.

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    It seems that this report surfaces every ten years, or so. It has been promoted by the makers of competing countertop materials, like quartz products like Cambria or Silestone and solid surfaces like Corian. You can read and listen to the reports for yourself, but it seems to me that this is a Chicken Little issue that grabs the media’s attention and the stone countertop industry then has to spend lots of time and money de-bunking it.

    Personally, I think that the threat presented by radon, in general, is way over-blown. I have never seen a positive, scientific, statistical link between radon levels and actual cases of lung cancer. All I’ve seen is pure speculation and panic prospering propaganda. The literature tells you all of the risks and dangers radon poses without actually showing that any of these dangerous consequences have ever occurred. None of the literature even acknowledges the effects simple ventilation has on dispersing the gas. Radon occurs naturally in the soil and rocks and it comes into a house through the ground. It can not be stopped. Ventilation is the remedy for houses that contain too much radon. The amount of radon that a stone countertop “might” emit is a small fraction of what occurs naturally and opening a door to the kitchen will remove any accumulated radon gas.

    I think this is another example of irresponsible journalism, if you can call it journalism at all.

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    I like to think of the kitchen not so much in terms of work triangles, but in terms of what the usual pieces look like and how much space they take up. There are the appliances, the countertops, the cabinets, etc. But each of the ”pieces” has unique characteristics. Two of the appliances, the refrigerator and the wall ovens, are what I call the “Big Boxes.” Sometimes a freezer might be included in this category, too.

    I call them the Big Boxes because they are taller than the countertop and just as deep or deeper than the countertop. Typical upper cabinets are 12″ deep, but even a refrigerator, like a Sub Zero, is 24″ deep. Wall ovens are also 24″ deep. Because of this bulky depth and their height of six feet or more, the Big Boxes interrupt any flow or continuity in the work area. Any work surfaces that are located on the opposite side of the big boxes from the primary work area will feel like thay are separated from the kitchen. So I like to lay out kitchens with the Big Boxes on the ends of the countertop and cabinet arrangements, making them sort of like bookends tot he entire layout.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com