How To Make Ugly Cabinets Look Cool

These cabinets started out as your basic oak stained cabinets (circa 1996, when this house was built). Our painter lightly sanded them, primed them, and painted them a pure white (bottom cabs = black). This might take two coats to cover all the oak.

Then you start to sand them. My mom used a handheld electric sander and went over the edges, parts of the faces (fronts), and near where the handles will be. Anything to make them look aged and used.

After wiping them down with a rag to remove the sawdust, take another rag (we used old socks) and apply wood stain to the cracks and crevices first, then the rest of the cabinets. This does not need to be neat and tidy, because you will be removing some of the stain with paint thinner in the next step. The main thing is to get it on there. My mom likes Minwax Early American colored stain. In Illinois, I used Dark Walnut colored stain and it worked great. Go ahead and go over the black cabinets with stain too.




Next, using a clean rag or sock, take a little bit of paint thinner and go over the cabinets again, leaving stain in the cracks and crevices and taking it off of most other places. You will get a feel for how much stain you want to leave on the cabinet faces after doing it a couple times. We didn't bother taking off any stain on the black cabinets.


Let your masterpiece dry until the stain is no longer tacky or sticky to the touch. Then make a pattern for drilling holes for new hardware, if needed, install your new hardware, and sit back and enjoy your brand new, old-looking awesome cabinetry!