kitchen cabinets finishes

I am not sure I would apply any laminate if I went through the trouble of using quality birch.  By quality birch I mean stuff from our northern neighbors, not the pacific rim.   As for brands of laminate, for some reason, over the years, I have drifted to wilson art; it may be that most of my suppliers can get that stuff faster.

As for finishing.  Listen, a lot of people can do that, including me.  But I am not marketing myself to you for that because I am very late with a finishing project for someone for a variety of reasons including my experimenting with a water base product (time to go green) which did not come out so good and the customer not wanting delivery of my final lacquered product as he could not have fresh lacquer in the house for health reasons – and guess what, while storing the finished product, I scratched them and am now doing them over – if he sees me marketing myself here, he will surely crucify me on this site.  I am not only saying this here becuase if the customer reads this he is going to tell you to never hire me to refinish anything and I don’t blame him (I am not worried, I can have ten people weigh in to say that I do the right thing) but also because I can tell you that you can finish these yourself and get a perfectly smooth finish without a spray gun.  Maybe not as smooth as lacquer but smooth which is smoother than a baby’s bottom.  We do it all the time.  We play around with finishes for the hell of it and use all sorts of different products just to learn.  You can resort to old fashioned Ben Moore Satin Impervo.   You can prime your wood with an oil base primer and sand lightly (320 Grit).  Apply two coats of paint, cutting each with penetrol.  then let it sit for two days and sand again with 320.  apply one more coat of satin impervo and let it dry for a week.  then look at it.  if you like it fine.  if not, wet sand it 400 grit paper.  Mind you, the oil base product may yellow a little which is ok so long as it is not near anything else which is white and non yellowing (we would not notice otherwise).

We use a host or water base products in similer ways.  good, high solids oil primers.  and then applying them with foam rollers.  multi coats and light sanding between.  sometimes we rub them out with a 0000 steel wood and some paste wax.  General Finishes makes good water based products.  Muralo paints carry water borne products specifically made for woodwork and cabinetry. 

Should you choose to do this, do not make the mistake of oversanding the wood from the start.  Sand it to 120 and no finer.  You can go finer after the prime coat and between coats but to do so before may cause the finish to fail.

I hope this helps. 

Steve

thank you for your responses and feedback! I m having them built by a carpenter although im doing some research on materials myself. Im thinking of the 13 multi-ply. If i decide to go with the laminate do you have any place you reccomend to buy from? i  would like a very smooth and thin laminate.  Also, do you know if there are lumbers that can apply the laminate directly to the ply before all the cuts?

I assume you’re building them yourself? Have you done this before? Are you using edge-banding? I would recommend edge-banding whether you paint them or not, unless you’re using a multi-ply plywood like 13-ply and want to use the multi-ply edges as a decorative element. For finishing there are several options; 1\. Just use a roller and latext or oil paint – not the best / most professional looking but it works – especially for the cabinet faces. Obviously not very durable! 2\. rent or buy an HPLV spray gun and white water-based lacquer (e.g. Valspar makes a good one). The water based lacquers are very safe. You can read about it and using them spray cabinets around the web. The results are not bad, but it takes practice, it’s messy, and ideally it should be done in a dust-free room with good air filtration. A good spray gun system, however, can cost $800+, still far less than the cost of custom cabinets. I bought my first one 2 years ago and even the first few times I used it I got some nice results. It’s a tedius process though; spray sealer, sand, spray lacquer, sand, spray lacquer. You get the idea. You can also spray clear finishes with them (obviously) and they work really well. Pros do use these set-ups, thaough it’s not “as pro” as a dedicated lacquer booth using (the very dangerous) nitro-cellulose lacquers. 3\. Find a millwork or refinishing shop that you can commision to spray your cabinets for you. I don’t know of any, and the contractor that I’ve worked with who used one said they can be difficult to work with as they are very busy with their own projects (this was 4 years ago, but I bet it’s still the same). If anyone here knows of a shop that does this kind of work in BK or Queens, I’d LOVE to hear about them… please post info. Note that for any of these methods, by  far the easiest way to do this, and the one preferred by many contractors is to buy pre-finished plywood, and make the cabinets from that, and then simply spray the doors / drawer fronts / visible exteriors. Obviously this means the insides of the cabinet are walnut or maple or whatever, but it saves a ton of finishing time and the there’s a nice lacquer finish on the inside materials. You can’t buy this pre-finished plywood at big-box stores, you have to go to the “real” lumber yards like Rosenzweig and Honerkamp (up in the Bronx), and it’s more expensive than regular. But, in my opinion, you can make some really nice cabinets without a lot of hassle in a decent selection of wood types by using pre-finished plywood and pre-finished edge-banding. Forgive me if you already know all this about ply-woods and stuff… I suppose you could laminate them as well, but I don;t mave any experiance with it, it seems like a pain in the ass. …good luck

Formica is just a brand name for a laminate.  It tends to be a little thicker than many of the others, but there’s no real advantage to that since the color layer is still relatively thin.  My question to you is, are you building them, or is someone else?  I ask this because, yes, you can get a smooth surface painting them, but based on the questions you’re asking, are your skill levels up to it?  Same thing with laminates, it’s not terribly difficult if you have the space and tools.  If you paint, you’d have to spray to get a really quality finish and the average DIY’er doesn’t have the equipement needed.  You’d also have to put edge banding on the exposed edges, unless you’re using a face frame, which is a hard cabinet to get the doors alligned in properly.  If someone else is building them for you, shouldn’t he or she know the answers to these questions?  I’m a huge fan of tackling projects yourself, but kitchen cabinets may be a big project to take on if you don’t know what you are doing, you may want to start with something a bit less ambitious.  If you are having someone build them for you, seems like they would be the ultimate person to ask, maybe even provide you with a sample of what the finished finish will be.