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Best way to finish Home Depot unfinished cabinets?

4K views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  mark sr 
#1 ·
Finishing up a large laundry room with a 10' run of base cabinets as the final install. I'm leaning towards the unfinished off the shelf cabinets from Home Depot - best price for the quality as far as I can see (incl Ikea). I don't have (nor am I inclined to rent) a sprayer for a professional finish since this is for the laundry room (not kitchen) but looking for a GEMO stain/poly method or paint (but fear annoying brush strokes with latter). Have some flexibility to consider tinted stain (maybe a kinda funky teal?) since if I don't like the results, I can always paint over. I'm assuming the process is to sand lightly, apply stain (have heard gel stains give the best result) with enough coats to desired hue then poly, light sand, poly, and if I can stand it sand and poly again. Does this sound right or is there a better approach?
 
#2 ·
If you have the budget, something like a Flexio 3000 is fantastic IMO. Many will tag me for saying it, but not sure why. I was hesitant to getting one for a long time bc of reviews, but what I realized now thatnice owned one for awhile is that people don't have the proper expectations. I would never use it for a large project, not even a wall. I have an X5 for those types of things. However, for shelving, doors, cabinets, furniture, I absolutely love the Flexio. Super simple to use and even more simple to clean. I even use it to spray water based Polycrylic which everyone says you can't do bc it dries out way to fast. I had 0 issues with it. If you realize that it's plastic, limited in what it can handle, and treat it as such it can be a really great time saver. Not a big learning curve either.
 
#3 ·
Way back when, custom built cabinets were made onsite. Those cabinets were almost always finished by brush - and looked good when done. It's still possible to get a nice job staining/poly with a brush. The trick is to use a quality brush and thin the poly slightly [sanding between coats of poly]

If you decide to paint you could use one of those mini rollers.
 
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