Wood grain. All wood has a grain to it. When wood is stained we are bringing out the beauty of that grain. When wood is being painted we sometimes want to minimize to appearance of that grain. A good example of this is when we are asked to paint cabinets. Either new wood or previously stained cabinets.

Sometimes this can be a challenge. Some woods like oak have a naturally open grain and on previously stained and lacquered cabinets there is often not enough lacquer to fill in the grain.

Let’s use as an example a new oak cabinet door. The best approach is to sand the wood smooth with a 220 grit paper. Next dust it off well. Next you will want to spray a fine coat of primer. We use proprietary primers and finish on our cabinet work. The scrub that primer into the grain of the wood using a quality brush. Work fast enough to not let the primer start drying. When dry you will want to sand the surface again and repeat.

We will normally do this about three times depending on the customers preference.

The next step is finish. We will spray and scrub the first coat of finish. Then sand. This last sanding we take special care to not burn any edges and we make sure to sand the surface well. Most of the wood grain will be minimized at this point.

We will spray two additional coats of finish and once, dry it will be perfect!!