I am helping my parents refinish their 30 year old stained Oak kitchen cabinets. The top / clear coat on 2/3 of the doors and drawers is flaking / peeling off ranging from mild to heavy amounts depending on the cabinet and original proximity to the sink / range. The intent is for me to prep and paint them with a waterborne pigmented lacquer - Emtech 6500 with cross link or better...haven’t decided on which Top Coat yet. I have a Fuji 4 stage turbine HVLP and am not worried about the actual spraying. I will be refinishing doors, drawer fronts and face frames basically and leaving the interiors of the boxes alone. The first round (doors and drawer fronts) will be done off site after I have properly prepped them for priming and paint. The face frames will have to done in place with plenty of prepping, masking, plastic and spraying.
I am worried about the amount of flaking finish that I’m seeing now that I’ve inspected in person and started to remove doors/drawers.
I know the flaking finish must be removed in order to even begin to think about priming / painting and obviously want to do this right and not have adhesion issues. It doesn’t seem like only sanding will be a) totally effective at removing flaking finish b) simple to do with the profiles of the doors and drawers without loosing the definition of the details c) cost effective for my time.
Without knowing if the original finish was some type of lacquer or an oil
based poly, what is the most efficient and effective way to strip/remove the flaking finish?
How do I deal with the area where the existing finish is fine but transitions into areas that are flaking when the striping happens? Am I going to end up needing to strip the entire door/drawer front even if only 25% of the door (say a bottom corner) is flaking or can I successfully blend the areas and have my primer cover.
I have done plenty of different finishing over the years, but have limited experience with actual finish stripping.
How would you handle this to ensure that it’s done properly?
They are currently stained a brown color and have some type of clear coat on top that was the original finish. Doors, drawer fronts are all solid Red Oak in a traditional raised panel style and well as a small raises panel type bevel around the border of all the doors. This is way more inconvenient to hand sand / scrape than a flat panel / door style where there aren’t raised panels, tiny rounded moldings, etc to reach into.
The 1st photo below is probably the worst of it. There are many doors that only have a smaller area and less flaking finish but enough to catch my eye upon inspection. Some (less than half) of the face frames have some flaking as well that will have to addressed in place.
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2nd photo is to get a sense of the style of the door with raised panel, etc.
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Thanks for any advice.