Finish for built-ins

[TBaiga]

I've tried to go through most of this section to find the answers myself, so my apologies for any redundancy.

My first projects in our new home is to create some more storage space. We moved from a townhome that was chock-full-of-built-ins to our new place and my wife misses all the storage/stowage options. The designs are pretty pedestrian, we're trying to emulate the existing cabinetry, while establishing a connection to our future interior design. So in keeping with the original cabinets, these are made from birch ply. The cabinets are stained a medium brown (saddle) on the exterior and the interior has a clear finish.

From what I've gleaned from the resident expertise, the finishing process reads something like seal (birch is blotch prone), stain and varnish. Does this sound correct? Marc mention's using Charles Neil's Pre-color conditioner (Blotch Control) as a first step (vs. dewaxed shellac). Followed by a gel-stain and several coats of wipe-on varnish seams to be a common formula. Does this make sense for the exterior? For the interior clear finish...just varnish or should a seal coat be used first as well?

I should also mention that the face frames will be solid birch and I imagine they will take stain differently than the ply.

[PaulMarcel]

What does the existing clear-coat you are trying to emmulate look like? Lacquer and varnish definitely feel different. Some of the nice water-bourne finishes like General Finishes Polyacrylic or High Performance are very easy to apply and form an extremely durable finish. I'd use that over lacquer for storage built-ins. If you want the varnish feel then you can't go wrong with GF's Arm-R-Seal although in the volume you'll use it in for a house-full of built-ins, perhaps mixing your own would save money. An advantage of the Polyacrylic or High Performance is that both are very spray friendly, even if you haven't done it much. I buy Polyacrylic by the gallon.

What is your future interior design? If you don't want birch for that, you could always switch to maple and color it similarly. They'll look pretty close, a little more muted on the color variances than birch.

Dunno if you found a link for the blotch control, but you can get it here. I've only used it a few times on smaller projects and it worked well. I don't see why it wouldn't spray nicely, which could save you some time. Anybody else spray it? Ace?

[TBaiga]

the cabinet interiors look and feel like the stained exterior, only the natural birch color. perhaps the arm-r-seal wiping varnish approach makes the most sense. now would it still be prudent to seal with the blotch-control and a light stain (or something to raise the grain) and then varnish?

built-in one replaces an existing linen base cabinet with a full floor-to-ceiling storage system. built-in two will be an L-shaped cabinet-open shelf system for the laundry room with cubbies for laundry baskets and a folding table surface.

final door styles yet to be decided, need the bosses input. be the exterior elevation of the home is a modernized craftsmen bungalo (timber and stone) so we'll continue that decor throughout. the new built-in door style with replace the existing cabinets eventually, but the colors work for our furnishing (the ones we'll have a long time). the key here is we're trying to imitate, but not exactly copy.

just trying to get a sense of the best overall approach to plywood finish cabinetry.

[AceHoleInOne]

Tom your on the right track, you will need to test with various stains and dyes and even perhaps a glaze. Not sure what finishing skills you have acquired over the years, but this could be a tester.

First a wash coat of something would be advised. I'm not familiar with Charlies Blotch Control that Marc may of mentioned. If you have spray capabilities you could probably skip the blotch control, test first, but I would go right to dye and spray very light coats to even color or tone, then seal that down with dewaxed shellac or even a water-based top-coat, stain over that with water based. It all depends, water-based or oil-based. Just depends what approach you take.

-Ace-

[TBaiga]

Thanks Ace. I'll definitely test things out first on scrap. Speaking of tests on scrap...do people save/archive these for future reference. Like Marc, I'm a science guy, so we tend to save samples of everything and take copious notes, lol!