Tips for restoring vintage cabinets without spending a lot

Vintage cabinets are not like modern ones. They look great in a refurbished kitchen. Finding such units is not an easy task. The task is expensive as well. Even if you find them, you have to restore them. Though it is a fun project, it is time-consuming. So, you need to afford a good chunk of time to restore your antique kitchen units.

Steps to restore vintage cabinets

Here are the basic yet key steps for the restoration of your vintage cabinets.

• Cleaning – Before you do anything, you need to clean the vintage cabinet. Usually, such units are likely to have years of grease, dust, and dirt accumulated. If you don’t want to make your home dirty with such debris, do the cleaning outdoors. Make a solution of water and soap. Now soak the scrub brush into the solution for cleaning the wood. A good mild liquid soap solution is good to remove the grease. The countertop should also be cleaned. In most cases, the countertops of the units are covered with tiles. You have to clean them as well.
• Sanding – After cleaning with soap water, let the cabinet get dried fully before you can move on. As the units are dried, remove the existing varnish from the wood with sandpaper. Fine grit sandpaper would be the right choice. Don’t put much pressure. Sand the wood lightly to remove the varnish and the flaws in the wood, if any.

  

• Varnishing– After you have removed the dirt and debris from the vintage kitchen cabinets, now it is time for varnishing. Use a good polyurethane finish for the timber. Varnish gives a traditional finish. And polyurethane adds a tough finish. Instead of applying a single thick coat of wood, apply 2 to 3 thin coats. And the final coat should be the best one as it would play the most important role to provide additional protection.

To restore vintage kitchen cabinetry, the key steps that you should undertake are cleaning, sanding, and varnishing.