Carpentry and Woodworking - Stripping Kitchen Cabinets

Hopefully someone can help me. I have cherrywood kitchen cabinets. They are not in the best of shape. I want to strip them and lighten them up a bit. I don't know what is the best way to go about doing this. What product do I use to get the stain/varnish off of them? And what product do I use after that process is done to keep them looking lighter and newer?

Thanks in advance for any help

Since the cabinets where made of cherry it is doubtful that they have any stain on them [stain is mainly used to make cheaper wood resemble the more expensive]. Oil base finishes do tend to darken over time so stripping them may lighten them some. I rarely do any stripping so I can't recomend any certain product but there are many brands out there - read the labels. After stripping,sanding and cleaning you can apply water based poly - it doesnt deepen the color or yellow with age.

And after all that, cherrywood will darken with exposure to light. You may not accomplish your goal of lightening them, after all.

You could use a palm sander or similar device and strip them down to wood. Wipe on some water in a spot to see if the color is what you want, and as said before, it will darken over time. If you want lighter, try using a pickling stain on ONE inconspicuous place, I've never pickled cherry before so I don't know what it would do.

Any number of product will remove the varnish. My personal favorite for varnish is strip-eaze paste based remover--but it is highly caustic and stinky. After you finish stripping, if the wood has darkened, you could try bleaching with wood bleach. I don't know how this would work on cherry, and know it can darken wome woods. Try it on an inconspicous spot.

Well, we don't have cherry (but it's what my wife wants!) but we're going to be stripping and re-finishing our cabinets in the next couple of weeks. I've chosen to go with a citrus based stripper (Citri-Strip I think it's called) and it also has a companion product to remove the residue and clean the wood afterwards. We're then going to use the MinWax Wood Conditioner before we re-stain. We'll also be lightly sanding with either 400grit or #0000 steel wool (haven't decided on that yet - will probably test out both to see which works best).

FWIW, it's the only citrus-based product at Lowe's.

--- Dragon77