There are many different reasons that you need to clean your cabinets… this is going to focus on cabinet cleaning in preparation for refacing your cabinets as well as cleaning serious build-ups of dirt and grime on your cabinets. There are many different cleaners that you can use to get the grime off of your cabinets, but not all of them are meant to strip the paint, varnish or whatever the surface happens to be. Most of the time you will need to sand down the cabinet’s surface to prepare that surface for the next type of surface; whether it be paint, varnish or veneer.

Why thoroughly clean your cabinet before refacing?

It goes without saying that you need to clean the surface of your cabinets approximately once a week just to get rid of the dirt, grease, grime, ink, fingerprints and whatnot that have built up over the course of our everyday lives. However, cabinet cleaning actually takes on a whole new meaning when you are preparing those cabinets for a complete refacing job. Not only do you need to clean off the everyday junk that builds up on the surfaces of your cabinets; but you also need to strip away the old surface to make way for the new one. You will most likely end up sanding down all of the surfaces of the cabinets you are refacing in order to properly prepare them.

Can sanding be used as another form of cabinet cleaning?

This too is a form of cabinet cleaning, one that you might end up resorting to if the dirt or grease builds up too thickly or if you end up getting paint or something like it on your cabinets that you did not want there. You might want to try using paint remover first however before you have to resort to sanding off the excess paint. If you have used paint remover and that still does not remove that paint, then you will have to grab that belt sander or sandpaper to remove that stubborn paint. I would not recommend grabbing for that sandpaper every time that a bit of paint gets spilled or splattered on the cabinets, just reach for a scraper and scrape it off.