[Doug Houston]

I haven't refinished a cabinet in a few years, but when I was doing it, I was never happy with the prepared toned lacquers, so I made mine up the hard way.

I already had the DEFT semi gloss lacquer (wood finish). I'd buy several colors of RIT clothing dye. It's aniline dye with salt mixed. I got some coffee filters and some color thinner. This is the slower drying lacquer thinner, used for final color lacquers. I put the RIT into a coffee filter and poured thinner into it. The thinner comes out tinted, but with some salt. One more filter, possibly with 2 filter thicknesses. That should get all of the salt out. I generally kept each color in a separate container. After making black, red, and green, or blue-green, I could mix tinted thinners with some DEFT, and have the toned lacquer I wanted. Just mixing red and a teeny black will give you brown, but too red brown. That's why you ad a bit of green, to give you a green brown, rather than a red brown. You get the feel of it after a while. I did several cabinets using that tinted lacquer, and the came out like new.

After the toned lacquer is fogged over the whitewood on the cabinet, and matches the stained waalnut to your satisfaction, then put on the first clear coat over the whole cabinet. Decal can go on here. When you clear coat over the deal, fog on the clear lightly, so as not to damage the decal. Once that coat sets up, then close in with the final clear coat (s).

Othyer than that, there's nuttin' to it.