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I watched several episodes of "Fixer Upper" on HGTV recently. The designer generally has custom cabinets made (the show is set in Texas).
The cabinets always arrive unfinished and they spray on the finish after installation.
Why would they do that? Why not pre-finished cabinets?
What finish would they apply? I assume it is done with a HVLP sprayer, but no reference is ever made about the finish. The cabinets are all face frame cabinets and they finish the interiors the same color as the exteriors.
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I'll give you my thoughts. I use to paint new construction homes and buildings when i was younger. Nearly all the kitchen cabinets were finished on site here in KC. However, my uncle was a builder in Iowa many of his cabinets were pre finished at the factory. I think some of it is geographical and just the trends of that region.
On another note; If you prefinish a built in or cabinet in a shop and then have it installed, there's always the risk that the finish will be damaged during transport or installation. A good friend of mine is a trim carpenter who has done many million dollar plus homes. He has always said pre finishing trim before installation is just a recipe for disaster because many pieces has to be pushed and "slammed" into place. Touching up these blemishes are time consuming and sometimes nearly impossible to get them to look like they never happened. Of course it depends on the finish too. This was trim which is different from cabinets but there's still some same considerations at a different degree.
Another reason is that many finishers don't have dedicated shops or finish rooms. They strictly finish on site only and in the garage or basement of the new home. When I use to bid new construction homes I would always have to look at how many doors and other free pieces would need to be finished and how free space would be available to do it onsite and in a relatively dust free area.
I use to spray all my enamels and lacquers with a Graco airless sprayer and a fine finish tip. I've used the best portable Graco HVLP's as well and the airless pumps with the right tips will give you just as good of a finish if not better. I say "if not better" because the airless will give you as much volume as you can put down nicely and still give you fine atomization that's needed. An HVLP is SLOOOW moving so there's a tendency to push past the speed/volume amount it can adequately spray. Unless you have a big pot sprayer style HVLP, which are quite expensive, the cup guns are always having to be refilled and you don't want to run out of lacquer in the middle of a long run of cabinets. An airless has an intake tube that can be dropped into a 5 gallon bucket so there's no stopping. The airless can also throw a ton of volume so you can spray so much faster if you're good with the gun. If you lay out a run of 20 cabinet doors on an elevated and extended ladder, you can spray a thick coat on the edges and the faces of all 20 in probably less than 2 minutes. It's the prep and set up time that time that really slows you down. The downside to an airless......more waste, more fog, longer clean up. Airless sprayers are best utilized on big projects or in a production shop and the better production shops are going to use air assisted machines--big money.
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A lot depends on how you work your project. I did video for a high end development ($3M up) some years ago. They bought prefinished cabinets and had a onsite rework area to fix dings; but they discarded a bunch of cabinets that were not economic for them to fix. (A bunch of the rework went into the POA center/gym.) They said that it made sense for them to do business this way. Interestingly some of the low end guys who buy prefinished from the BORG work similarly.
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As KCF said, installing unfinished cabinets and trim is definitely easier than the care required with prefinished. On the other hand, I think most on-sight finishing must be a fairly straight forward process, maybe just a sealer and topcoat, or a simple stain, sealer, topcoat. It's hard to imagine anyone on-site doing the complex processes used to finish some high end cabinets, such as dye, seal, stain, seal, toner or glaze, seal, topcoats.
John
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John,
You are right when you say straight forward and simple finishing processes for on sight finishing. The majority of stained wood cabinets, regardless or wood species, gets Minwax or a similar pigmented stain. Some now use "dye stains" as well and although I haven't used them I suspect they are very similar to good old fashioned OB pigmented stains. Gel stains are more common nowadays as well. Most are followed up with sanding sealer and a single coat of NC lacquer. Some are lucky enough to get precat lacquer nowadays but many expensive home still got straight off the shelf "high build" NC lacquer. Nonetheless, new construction wood finishers couldn't care one bit about splotching grain. "It's not our fault you chose birch"!......I think that's one of the reasons you see more knotty alder used around here now. Oak was even but it's not currently popular in these parts.
A friend of mine (married to a rich dentist) built a million dollar home here in KC about 10 years ago. Beautiful birch cabinets that were absolutely murdered with pigmented Minwax OB and cheap NC lacquer. What a shame.
Many crews use white pigmented lacquer for trim and cabinets as well. I have never done so as I always used OB enamel (all we had back then). A huge advantage to the pigmented lacquer on the white trim was the drying time. I have some white lacquer in my house (here when I bought the house) and it is failing in the bathrooms and utility rooms. Especially on the MDF drawer edges.
One thing I did learn--and hated--was you could leave your work absolutely flawless to only have to return to fix blemishes other contractors had blessed your work with. The electricians and carpet layers were the worse. Of course, repairs had to be built in the bid and you more or less had to do them for free in the end if you wanted to get bids. That's why flat paint is used in new construction as well.
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Thanks everyone for the replies. The designer takes a rustic approach to interiors and mostly paints white or earthy colors.
I think they are using airless but they only show the painting as a 3 to 5 second clip, so it is hard to tell.
In the New York area we only seem to see pre-finished.
On my parent's new kitchen the contractor was short one piece of trim. So I had my parents pay $14,000.00 of the $15,000.00 of the job with the final $1,000.00 dollars to be paid when the last piece of trim was installed. (I was pretty sure he would have "forgotten" about that trim if we did not withhold the money.)
So with pre-finished cabinets and trim you either end up with a lot of scrap or too little to finish the job.
On the other hand their cabinets had a glazed finish and I doubt that could have been done on the job site.
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I'm sure a glazed finish could be done on site but if everything else is pre finished the cabinets probably were too.
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Theres no reason that shading, toning or any other technique couldn't be done on site. I always preferred finishing cabinets after installation, but there's plenty of issues with that also. Masking things off perfectly takes a lot of time. Then there are the spots that aren't easy to access, like the bottom edge of the lowers face frames, inside some narrow door openings, etc. All in all I think its easier to do them in the shop then take care in moving and installation.
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I watch the same show. She is very particular about her color choices and combinations. I'm sure she can't get exactly what she wants from her cabinet vendor.
I have also noticed that they buy a lot of "stock sized" cabinets and design the kitchen around them. Makes sense from a cost standpoint.
I've been looking at cabinets lately and found that some of the higher end "stock" unfinished cabinets doors are actually MDF or even vinyl. I was a little taken aback. The reasoning is that the wood doesn't move and the paint doesn't crack at the joints. And painted cabinets are "in" right now.
Ship lap.... just had to say it.
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Snipe Hunter said:
I watch the same show. She is very particular about her color choices and combinations. I'm sure she can't get exactly what she wants from her cabinet vendor.
I have also noticed that they buy a lot of "stock sized" cabinets and design the kitchen around them. Makes sense from a cost standpoint.
I've been looking at cabinets lately and found that some of the higher end "stock" unfinished cabinets doors are actually MDF or even vinyl. I was a little taken aback. The reasoning is that the wood doesn't move and the paint doesn't crack at the joints. And painted cabinets are "in" right now.
Ship lap.... just had to say it.
Well, MDF takes paint beautifully as long as you seal the machined edges with shellac or a shellac based primer (or use oil based paint). I'm reluctant to use it on large pieces because they get so damned heavy. They also don't take fasteners very well (but glue up nicely). They carry weight vertically very well, but do poorly horizontally. And they are not happy about getting wet. So if it is a dry area of the kitchen and you don't mind the weight, the horizontal weakness, and it is a dry area, MDF is perfect for painting and it is cheap.
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