We recently delivered a live-edge maple slab door to a customer and there was a lot of talk about making sure the maple wasn’t too yellow. She had her maple floors refinished as part of her house remodel and she was worried about the color of the new maple door. It wasn’t too much of an issue because the maple slab had an array of colors, including black epoxy, but when we were installing the door it became clear why she was worried about the color. Turns out she had a kitchen full of maple cabinets which had turned amber orange over the years and now clashed with the refinished maple floors.

I saw what she saw – bright white, newly and expertly refinished maple floors underneath old, crusty and orange maple cabinets. The cabinets were still in decent shape but they definitely needed some help to not look so old. She picked the right day to ask if there was anything that could be done about the color because I was riding high from a successful install of a very cool door and there was no way I was going to act like I couldn’t do it.

I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to go about it, but I knew it would start with sanding. And, since everything in the kitchen, including the crown moulding was made from maple-veneered panels with an mdf core, I spent a lot of time very carefully sanding. After I had my parts sanded to an even and much lighter color, I started to apply the Raw Sealer finish from Basic Coatings. I chose this finish for one main reason, and that is because it is the exact same finish the flooring company used. I could have used another water-based finish with a white additive, but I figured why fight it? Use what they used on the floor and I should have the best chance of matching it.

The Raw Sealer has a very small amount of white added to it and I found that I wasn’t getting enough white in the finish until I was up to about six coats on my test pieces, so I decided to add some more white. I added enough white latex paint (about two tablespoons per quart) until the finish was the right amount of white in two or three coats instead of six. The white paint added brightness and covered the yellow orange of the maple, and it will work to retain the original color since the paint won’t yellow. It worked like a white wash for the cabinets and really did the trick.

The most difficult part of the job, besides the tedious sanding, was applying the finish with the white added. It needed to be applied evenly, so I needed to make sure my gun was working great and so was I. There were a few times where the color didn’t look too even or the gun sprayed a little wacky, but I was able to quickly wipe that panel off with a wet rag before the finish dried and reapply.

I spent a lot of hours on this job (more than budgeted, of course), but I think it came out great and I might even be convinced to do it again someday in the distant future. Click on the video link to see what I started with and how it all ended up.