Sanding and Painting Stained and Lacquered Cabinet Doors

this is a scenario we're going to be running into all the time where customer calls us up they've got a stain and lacquer cabinet and now they want them white or some other color and Sherry you are the sanding expert I came here to learn how to get a better finish myself and learn some tips and tricks from you and I want them to share this with our audience and we've got a bunch of um who needed products right here that I typically keep in my vehicle but just to simplify this process can you give us some tips and tricks how you would go about sanding this door what products you would use so our customers could see this in action so this is just a stained and lacquer door just pull off of somebody's house and where how do we start well this is a pretty detailed profile door so we're going to need a half inch because we need to be able to drop in and get some of these profiles without flat spotting right but we still have a lot of flat surface and we don't want to use a half inch on the flat surface so I would pull in a 10 millimeter and then the last thing is is we because it is so detailed there will be some areas where we will need to do some hand sanding and so the last thing I would pull in is the economic sponge and so um for my audience there's a lot of different um within the sponge different grits you can use so um you've got I can see there's fine very fine and super fine and um there's other ones but um and maybe like medium and stuff like that what grits would you use to sand this door well the the thing that we have to remember is that we're gonna the door's gonna be really good and cleaned right and that the what we want to do is we want to take off the shiny surface so you want to go a little bit more aggressive in the beginning so you may want to go medium fine or a fine right and you want to get that gloss off of there but we have to also remember that we're not sanding for leveling in this situation we're sanding for the next coat to adhere right so we're just looking to put a scratch so we don't have to get into our conventional abrasives and really get down into the wood because the more you get down into the more the more you're going to show in your your finish so what I would go with is I would go either with like I said a medium fine and then or a fine that would give us a good scratch so medium fine refining I know um I get this question all the time yo from customers and they're saying do I need to sand this down to bare wood before I paint it absolutely not okay and um so all we're trying to do is just create a mechanical scratch um and a good scratch with our abrasives so our top coat can bite to that right right and I know like if you do because this is going to happen you're going to start sanding and you are going to what we call burn through the finish all the way to the wood that's definitely okay we're not going to try to strip the whole entire thing to wood if you do burn Through the Wood on some areas we're just going to prime those before we actually top coat them um or you're going to be priming the whole door and somebody a lot of it this is getting into Coatings and what Coatings are using and stuff but typically if you're getting into bare wood it's going to be need you're going to need to prime those areas specifically so um can we just see what it looks like you're gonna start sanding this um what are you going to start with first you pulled out a 10 millimeter spot right so this is a 10 millimeter closed sponge a little bit denser right it's a closed cell and the reason I use 10 millimeter and the five millimeter in this instance would be fine you could use a five millimeter but you want it to either be the five or ten because you want the dense denser uh foam properties a closed cell phone and the reason being is because you want it to actually grip you don't want that deep recession of the grain right [Music] all right so you can see the amount of powder that this leaves and that's what we're looking for was that all we want to do is we just want to take off that clear coat right and give it a nice scratch that'll actually fill in really nice so we didn't we didn't like cut all the way through the clear coat we just kind of scratched the top of it right so if you start over sanding um you're going to start cutting through that into the wood and we don't need to do that right and you're also gonna you know you're gonna you don't wanna the least amount you cut through on these edges and and into your your stain the better it is because that's going to show up in your paint right and so you started off with the um 10 millimeter uh closed cells sponge on your flat surfaces then you'll switch over to a different sponge now yeah I'll go in with and the reason being is because I do have a lot of pillow topping in here I got a lot of profile that'll need to be sanded so I can turn this in that's the nice thing about the 3x4 again I've talked about it before I always offset a little bit Yeah I do that a lot [Music] foreign [Music] you can see a little bit of cut through even with the half inch and that's okay you know we're not we're not completely cutting it down yeah we I mean we see that all the time it's not very um uncommon at all it's typically always going to cut through just a little bit and that's where you know depending on what top coat you're going to be using some cough coats require a primer and then a multiple top coats um some of the uh one and 2K polys we're using their self-seal products and they'll seal that bare wood you know on your first coat and so they're a little bit simpler and easier to use I know you got an echo Diamond sponge would you use that at any point in time on this this door yeah the edges are something that I usually go back to hand sanding on and the reason I do you can use the sander I'm not saying you can't but for me I get a little bit better control by grabbing the door and I can actually get all the way up to this right without changing that so I like to hand sand my edges all the way around and then I usually check too after I sand all of this to see do I did I miss anything did I miss anything in here that I might need to hit you know if I maybe the sander skipped over right here and I might might need to get in here the nice thing about the hand sanding sponge is it gives me that ability because it's very flexible right so I can turn it any way I want and get in right and say it it didn't take you very long to do this at all so that's scratched up good enough to begin our coding process absolutely yeah I know like for me I'm trying to do this extremely fast and because the faster I do it the more efficient I'm going to be I guess it comes down to money I want to make more money the faster I am I typically will have my half inch sponge I'll do my edges with my mechanical sander half ends is that wrong to do or no okay no I just prefer I feel like I get a better sand and I've got more control on the edges with the hand sponge yeah and I I did like I um I always have academic sponges I have a couple other your guys's sponges use we always keep them on the job site too I usually have an inspection table with an inspection light um I saw you adjusted the sponge I like to adjust the sponge a lot of times like this to get it down to the corners that's okay to do too yeah okay nothing wrong with that so I believe we're like ready to uh dust and re-coat all right right okay and so um we are going to recoat now I'm going to spray on whatever type of top coat it is I like using uh 2K polys so I catalyze polyurethane I'm going to spray it on um first coat an hour later I'm gonna sand in between coats what would I sand with in between coats generally MO most people will step up right I kind of go between sometimes I'll step up it depends on the thickness of your your primer also like on your coating what what how thick of a layer you lay down if you're laying it on very thick then I'm going to stay with the same grit but if it's a if it's a thinner layer then I might step up and go you know very fine here on primer um on the flat surface same thing I'm going to go very fine I'm always going to match these twos because I want that scratch to match right and then on the echo Diamond I'll step up to the 180. okay so um that's a really good point you just brought up so we have a half inch sponge we have a 10 millimeter of a sponge you're saying you def you want to match so if I'm using very fine on one I want to use very fine on the other yes so that that's good to know because sometimes I haven't paid attention to that as much so um and because you said the scraps you want the scratch to match so it's match of scratch to match the scratcher scratch the match [Music] thank you [Applause]