So this particular kitchen is the Birch one I was trying to match up. (Refinish, Doors only) It was a battle as I believe the original finish was just a toning lacquer, or possibly a stain then T.L. Anyhow, I sanded down a sample door and managed to get a good match with 2 coats of Saman waterbased wiping stain, mixing two colours together. then clear coating. I'm tring to keep it all water base as my shop is not set up for spraying lacquers, nor am I interested in spraying lacquer.
I did experiment with spraying the stain and a 2 in 1 product, but was not having any luck. I don't think the water based stuff sprays as nice as the lacquers.
All that aside, the client is happy with my match. (Not shown in the picture). Picture is with 1 coat.. Looked good after 2 coats.
Anyhow, would you stain both sides at the same time, or stain 1 side, let dry, flip and stain other side? Probably just use those painting pyramids for the staining portion of project. Any feedback is very much appreciated! 🙏
Here's what I do... It works, and IMHO, is the fastest, easiest, & most foolproof method I've found...
Identify the upper & lower cabinet doors and make some identifying mark on the hinge hole so you can see if you're dealing with an upper door or lower door. A "U" for Upper and "L" for Lower is good. Don't use an upper arrow for uppers and downward-pointing arrow for lowers, (you'll be flipping half of them upside-down, so this would cause a lot of confusion). With the lower doors, after I stain ALL sides at once, I put it up against a wall, with only the hinge-side edge actually making contact with the wall, (at roughly a
30° angle), making sure to put the bottom part of the lower door on the floor, (actually, I use parchment paper, since the doors won't stick to it like they do floor paper). For upper cabinet doors, after I stain all sides at once, I put that on the parchment, but this time the top edge of the uppers will rest on the floor, so all your upper doors would essentially be upside-down while doing this. This allows you to stain all sides at once with the only edge at risk of getting slightly messed up during the staining is the edge that will never be visible to anyone after the doors are installed.
After you're maybe 1/3 or 1/2 done with the staining, take a sec and reposition the doors so they don't just stay glued in place on flat ground. After you've done all the staining and the doors are dry enough to handle, turn em upside down and fix the edge that was on the ground. Usually just a quick scuff with a maroon scotchbrite pad, wipe clean, then take a rag and barely dip it in some stain and wipe on the stain of that edge, and make sure to wipe off all adjacent edges with a clean rag to avoid adding more stain to the faces or backs. Make sure to check the little corner on the hinge-side edge also where it was rested against the wall and touch-up as needed.
This entire process can really only be done during the staining process and is not advisable for any applications of sanding sealer or finish coat. You could also rest them on smooth-grade 1x2 stock instead of the ground, but long runs of many doors all balanced on the same 2-3 boards can get sketchy, especially if you end up kicking one of those 1x2's with your foot or something. Since you'll be resting them up against the wall with only a small point of contact with the wall, it's always a good idea to start in the middle of wall and angle half of them one way and half of them the other way. This is just insurance, in the event the doors tumble and fall, you'd only lose half of the wall length.
I would never consider staining only 1 side at a time. You'd end up getting stain on the backs while only doing the fronts, be it from your fingers or somehow while handling them, and you run the risk of those stain prints telegraphing through the final stain finish.
