Flat Sanding cabinet doors. Cabinet Painting 101

this is paint life tv i'm christy idaho painter today we're going to give you some tips and tricks when it comes to sanding cabinet doors in sandy furniture we're doing some repainting of cabinets cabinet doors and furniture also and i'm going to give you some tips and tricks to getting an ultra flat finish when it comes to sanding so if you want to see us sanding cabinet doors and getting that ultra flat finish the professional look stay tuned for this video [Applause] [Music] all right here we are we're working with some cabinet doors these are lacquered cabinet doors we're going to be sanding them and getting them ready for a finish we're going to be putting on a coating centurion 2k poly it's going to be a catalyzed product we're going to be spraying on here and we want to get a factory like finish we want to get an ultra flat finish and i'm not talking about a flat finish but an ultra flat finish and part of getting that finish is having an inspection light having a table to work on where you can see all the imperfections now these cabinet doors hanging in the kitchen they look pretty good they look um pretty awesome they used to be a um wood they were an alder naughty alder it was all filled and then they were sprayed with a lacquer multiple coats of a high build lacquer and if you look at them in an inspection light there's a lot of surface tension to these cabinet doors there's a lot of ripples in them there's a lot of imperfections in them that you can't see in just regular lighting if i'm looking at it like this i can't really see any of those imperfections the benefits of having an inspection light and an inspection table is you can get that ultra flat finish that um that finish that has no imperfections in it so i can set it on here i can see a lot of surface tension i can see kind of some egg shelliness to that sprayed-on coat that was done before with an hvlp sprayer i want this thing to be absolutely glass and i don't want to have any surface tension i don't want to have any stippling and so to get that to achieve that you have to get it sanded completely flat sanding is extremely important we're going to be using a 3x4 sander this is by far the best sander you can ever use when it comes to cabinet repainting it makes the sanding process actually enjoyable makes it fun it doesn't make it this tedious hard thing to do you can sand profiles you can sand contours i typically have half inch open cell sponges for sanding contours rounded edges i have closed cell sponges 10 millimeter and 5 millimeter for doing any shaker style doors and i have all these abrasives available to me right here on my inspection table and um and it's going to make a quick turn around if i got to switch abrasives they are hook and loop so i can just quickly uh change those if i need to but i want to get a ultra flat finish on here so i want to sand flat one thing is you don't want to use any type of open cell sponges or sponges when you're sanding on these flat surfaces because they're just going to contour to any type of grain contour to any type of uneven surfaces and you're not going to get it flat part of getting that ultra you know flat finish that factory-like finish is getting a flat sand so we want to use a flat surface that doesn't have any type of give to it you could use a pad saver in between here if you have inexperienced people using the sanders if they burn through the paper they're using this is plastic it's not paper so it's very durable but to protect your pad here from getting damaged to the hook and loop you could use a pad saver but i want to get an ultra flat finish on here so i'm not going to use a pad saver in between here and i'm going to begin sanding part of this the inspection process processes i got my table right here i got my light right here you can see bondo i've used bondo glazing putty so i've got bondo glazing putty right here that i use to fill any nicks and dings prior to any sanding so i'm going to set my um my my door on here i'm going to inspect this door try to find anything that wouldn't sand out easily nyx dings cracks that i can fill first and then we're going to begin sanding but i'm going to show you a little bit of the techniques of sanding here what it looks like to sand flat hopefully we can get some um close-up video of what this looks like kind of the surface tension the egg shelliness what it looks like to not be flat we're going to sand this and we're going to show you what an amazing finish looks like and kind of that just whole next level factory-like professional finish with a 2k poly from centurion coatings so i'm just going to start off standing i got my inspection table i've got a light cast set across here so this is a light you can get these lights from paintlifesupply.com and it's an led light and you know you have to have the proper lighting cast across your surface so you can see all the unevenness you can see anything that's not flat you could if things are in front of the light that's obstructing the light casting across it you just want to set those things aside and out of the way so you can get your light casted across this table and cast it properly i typically have my um my sander next to me close where i can hang a lot of this stuff on and we'll get that over here and show you what it looks like i got a or i'm not a sander but my vacuum my vacuum has a tool um shelf on it that houses all that stuff i do have to after all my sanding is done i got my cup hooks right here that i can screw my cut books in because we always spray hanging but now my table is free from extra obstructions the way this light is i actually mounted my light on a um kind of just a one a one by three piece of trim and the light swivels so you can cast that light you know whatever direction you want to give the right light so you can see all the imperfections you know across your door here i can see a lot of unevenness a lot of eggshelliness across that door and we're going to eliminate that by sanding so i'm starting off i always do my initial sand very first i typically i'm going to use a film tech 220 so this is unita's film tech it's a plastic abrasive three by four abrasive it's going to go on here right onto my sander and i'm going to begin sanding flat i'm going to be very careful when i come to my edges not to get too far over and begin rounding my edge i want it to be flat so i'm not going to come out too far i'm going to come up and over and sand some of the tips with sanding don't put too much pressure just allow the sander to do the work for you i'm just going to just hold it in place it's got a paddle on off and i'm just going to begin doing my sanding now i sanded that right there flat and it happens extremely fast if you have a good sander the um ekasan 3x4 sander is absolutely amazing it sanded that flat eliminated all the egg shelliness also part of making sanding enjoyable is not getting all dusty and dirty having it hooked up to a vacuum system this is a hepa vac system and it keeps a dust free environment when sanding so we're going to continue sanding i'm going to do my flats first and then we're going to begin doing our profiled edges we always do our fronts and backs of the doors one thing um it is good practice to always do the backs first flip it over and do the fronts because if you do your backs first and you don't have it on a good clean surface there's any um contamination if there anything rough or anything that could scratch you know the face you could you don't want to scratch the face you want to do your face last and the back first you can see there's large knots in here so these large knots this is what it looked like on the other side of the door i'll give you a little tips and tricks when it comes to filling these knots these are really large you don't want to use bondo glazing putty to do anything large in the beginning you want to use spackle so i'm going to do the initial fill with spackle sand that and then i'm going to use bondo glazing putty over the top of that so i'm going to sand the back of this door the knots on the backs weren't filled before which i don't think is really a good finished look to it so we're going to actually fill these knots on the backs of all these doors this time when these cabinets are repainted i'll show you some sanding i typically would fill this first i'm just going to sand this and then and then we're going to fill it [Music] so this is this type of door i'm talking about this is the back side of a door and this is more of a shaker style door so you got this lip right here if i run my sand up against this you're going to get some vibration on the sander running up against there you could damage the pad on your sander that's where these 10 millimeter sponges really come in handy when uh sanding because it's not gonna your um sanding pads not gonna ride up against there and it's not gonna damage the edge so this is a really short lip so a five millimeter sponge is gonna work great for that i'm gonna switch over to a five millimeter and now i can begin sanding so i got my um my vacuum here this is my vacuum with where i typically keep all my tools hanging and available for me i do i do have back problems standing and stuff so i do like to sit down now when i'm actually sanding it just makes it a little bit more pleasant i've got um a little i keep all my abrasives down here on my sander but it's kind of cool having this tool shelf i keep my mask hanging there um keep uh this is what i vacuum with this is a horse hair into my vacuum a battery operated vacuum it's what i vacuum with when i'm all done sanding so here's what it looks like sanding on the back side the shaker style so that's what it looks like sanding shaker style now i'm going to be back to my front side i'm going to begin doing contours working on these contours i'm going to use a open cell sponge that's going to contour to all these routed edges here so i want to get rid of any type of surface tension on these edges also so one of the great things about these sponges too you can offset them so i slightly offset the sponge so i can work on that that contoured edge right there when i'm working on my contoured edges i'm using eka silk plus and this is a medium sponge it cuts a little bit faster on those contoured edges i can slightly offset it a little bit more when i'm working on these larger contours right here so i can get it in here now i'm going to take and look at my i've got all the initial sanding done and i keep a couple tools handy here because i see a few little things on my door some little imperfections kind of um a little sharp edge right here a little piece of dust got painted on in there i'm going to just scrape that off this is this light is going to show you all these little tiny things and i use a lin bite scraper to if i see anything down there's something right here down here i can use the linbide scraper to scrape it off or you can use like a putty knife to scrape it off that doesn't have sharpen it of an edge sometimes having a sharp edge is a little advantage but it's a little there got it off now i'm looking for everything i want these cabinets to be absolutely perfect now where i scrape that i'm going to re-sand that and then this door will be done now through the sanding process i see can see one i can see a little tiny nick right here that didn't stand out and i've got a little tiny a couple kind of tiny dings right here i can continue trying to sand that out of the finish i might end up ended up cutting down into the old finish cutting down into the wood which would cause me to have to prime it so i'm just going to bondo those um let that dry and then we will take and re-sand it so i'm going to vacuum this off and i'll show you i keep a battery operated vac next to me so i can just vacuum these things off and get them clean ready to be painted so once you get the sanding done you can maybe see some other stuff i see another little thing down inside here a piece of dust or something that got painted on built up so everybody's kitchens you have different lighting and so you could have somebody's kitchen that just acts just like an inspection light that would show all these imperfections and so you definitely want to get these things taken care of now i can see it looking through my light i can see a ding here ding here and looks like i got one right there i'll show you the filling the bondo glazing putty so there's a lot of different things you could put your bondo on you put it on a stir stick sometimes i like this is just a piece of cardboard and it's got a coating on the other side so it doesn't absorb the moisture out of the bondo so it doesn't dry as fast it gives you a little bit more working time but you're gonna see there's a nick right here and you can see how i just scraped it and you'll start to see it show up it's right there's a little ding right there there's a little ding right there so i'm just going to leave a little bit of bondo behind a little bit high it sands really fast and easy i'll get rid of those dings there's one right here and that's looking pretty good there's nothing on the edges sides i'm going to flip this over we're going to fill with spackle the backside knots there was some nicks things these are smaller nicks and dings that sparkle is not good because it's too too small to fill holes like that the spackle will sand out really easy um little tiny nicks and things like this bondo glazing putty is what you want to use i'm going to get a really flat finish we're after that ultra ultra flat finish this cabinet door is pretty banged up on the back side we don't want the customer to be looking at banged up doors so we want to indentations where the hinges were previously all right now i use done with that and i use a crawford's spackle to do my filling with spackle so i'll show you our crawford's here and we'll fill these backside knots so here's i really like crawford's spackle it's more dense a little bit harder it's not a lightweight spackle but it's a good interior exterior spackle so i'm going to spackle my holes speckle's a little bit dry it's tobacco definitely dries out so you you can take re-wet it i'm going to put on some water inside there re-wet that that's going to fill large holes so i'm going to put spackle first sand that and then we'll back it with backing with bondo a lot of this cabinet has really taken a beating on the back side of it so there's a lot of more nicks and dings i want to fill those before i sand again so we'll fill all these nicks and dings so here's another pointer sanding i want to just go over this and this is i'm teaching um one of my apprentices how to sand to get flat finishes and stuff and how to properly use the sander and all you can see this door this was the very first door that he did and this is a good example of when you're actually sanding and trying to get that flat finish and keeping the profile of this door looking the same you don't want to overrun your sand or over these edges because the sander's going to have a tendency to tilt or rotate instead of having a flat surface it's going to start to contour that surface down now this sanding right here what happened was he came over gets too far over and he starts to tilt the sander this direction and it begins to rotate that profile down it begins to cut through the other finish it it actually cut through the finish the stain and down into bare wood and that's going to need to be primed it happened same thing on here so what you want to do this was a combination of multiple things getting over the edge and actually putting too much downward pressure on the sand or as you rotate over that edge so i'll show you you know the flat sanding what it actually looked like it's just a light you want to be just gentle with this sander you're going to hold it in your palm to control the sander let the sander do the work if you put too much pressure you'll get swirls not enough pressure you'll get swirls also also but we're trying to control it trying to keep it on the flat surface so it sands flat all right i'm continuing right along doing my sanding inspecting and i'm going to just give you a little tip there's sometimes occasionally well you'll burn into you know beyond your previous coating into wood the product that we're using the 2800 series product that we spray with it is a self-seal product sometimes you may have to add a third coat if you get into um sand into the wood pretty deeply and because it's going to absorb your coating and the first coat actually acts as a seal coat and then your next coat would be your top coat and so there's occasionally you might have to do a third coat you can just spray on a vinyl sealer cic has a vinyl sealer that you can seal this bare wood first before you do your top coat so i can just take these edges where i did burn in in there and just spray a vinyl sealer on here i'll do my final sand and make sure i don't cut through that and that will actually seal that bare wood so it's nice to have a can of vinyl sealer i also use the vinyl sealer for one when i spray my first coat if there's any contaminants on this door you can actually see it because it's gonna fish eye and the vinyl sealer or a shock bomb can works amazing for eliminating fish eyes so it resolves any type of contamination issues you may have in spraying cabinets i'm going to say i don't think there's ever been a cabinet job that i've ever done before in my career where one of the doors did not have a contaminant even after cleaning that even after sanding it that didn't fish eyes so having a can a vinyl sealer is an absolute must when doing cabinet doors so another part of flat sanding getting a really good sanded surface is having you know a good clean surface to be sanding on i want to make sure like because i'm doing bondoing spackling and stuff like that i don't want to have anything you know hard on this paper i like paper down for a nice soft surface to be laying on but i don't want anything rough anything that could be scratching my finish i'm going to you know feel this occasionally the paper and make sure it doesn't have anything on it a dry spackle anything that's going to be rough or hard i've been doing some caulking spackling on here just make sure you have a good soft givable surface and a clean surface to be sanding on and if it's not just scrape it like this get it all nice and clean and then vacuum it occasionally so i'm always i'm every time i vacuum one of my doors i typically vacuum the surface of my table also to keep it clean so once again it's great having a battery operate they got a bosch vacuum down here it's like that good clean surface now i'm going to continue my filling and my sanding so we're continuing right along just doing our sanding filling when i'm working trying to get this ultra flat finish also pay attention to your seams and your cabinet doors we definitely want to make sure those seams are getting filled so you don't see any types of scenes seams once again having an inspection light is absolutely critical having the inspection like casting right at the right angle is also important also to getting that flat finish this door is looking pretty dang good looking almost imperfection free got a few now and then we keep seeing these little um and they're probably you know pieces of dust pieces of caulking or something because these doors were actually cocked also it's a little high spots in these edges right here just sanding those things out you never know what the customer is going to pick out so you just want to make sure your doors are flawless we're trying to get the flawless finish that we can you can see i do got a table a paint line drying rack you know right next to me it's good to have a racking system right next to you so you can you know work with your doors…