Kitchen Cabinet project

 We do a lot of cooking at our house and realized that our cabinets have taken quite a beating.  Here is a picture of some of the damage, mainly in the area of the kitchen sink.  Most people are kind enough not to notice when they are over, but we were getting pretty disgusted.  I went to Home Depot and Menards and bought a couple of markers that were supposed to fill in and blend, but they did not work.  So, I called several cabinet restorers and received bids between $800 and 1700.00 to repair.

As I was mulling over what everyone said about how they would refinish the cabinets, I thought about an old trick I had used on some furniture nicks before.  Good old Sharpie Markers.  I decided to give it one more try using the supplies in my CRAFT ROOM!  I pulled out several colors and chose a small drawer.  I used several colors and carefully colored in each little nick, making sure to blend the area so that one color was not highlighted.  Then I realized that it was going to take forever, especially on the bigger areas of the cabinet doors.  I made a couple of mistakes with the markers and remembered that the Ranger Alcohol Blending solution cleans up permanent ink.  While I was getting out the blending solution that is stored with my alcohol inks, I thought that maybe I could use the alcohol inks for the bigger areas.  I had some inks from probably 10+ years ago and decided to try them.  They worked great but dried quickly, so I had to use lots of blending solution to soften the big blotchy areas.   

After much time on my hands and knees, and a trip to Michaels for the Minwax wood seal and finish, my kitchen cabinets look new again.  I got so carried away that I did the wood legs on the kitchen chairs too. Yesterday, we had 4 different people stop by and say they did not see any difference between the ones I finished and the others.  HOORAY!!!!!  

Here are the finished cabinets.  Under the bright lights, you can see the places that were really badly damaged, but I promise that in natural light with the naked eye, they look very natural.

Repaired

Damaged