Cabinet Sliders
Our kitchen was refaced with hinged doors, but the cabinet in the "utility room" (aka dining room for us) was covered with luan paneling and a mahogany face frame with hinged doors was added. I was able to pull the mahogany and luan off with surprisingly little damage (except to my wrist from pulling about 100 finishing nails out of the wood). The grooves for the sliders are still intact (they'd been chopped off the kitchen cabinets) and not glopped up with paint. I bought some 1/4" masonite to make new doors, but I can't figure out what kind of pulls the original doors had. Would something like this be similar?
I peeled some of the contact paper off of one of the shelves and took it to the paint store and had the original zolotone color matched. Does anybody know how to fake the little black specks?
Zolatone is still being manufactured, so that would be a good and easier place to start. Here is the URL:
Cathye
The original sliders most likely had a small indentation scored right into the masonite. It's a detail very hard to replicate, although I vaguely recall a posting awhile back from someone claiming to have done it. When I replaced the sliders in my kitchen, I used stainless finger pulls similar to the ones in your post. Note that the X100 used them in a two to a door configuration.
I tried getting a match of my original zolatone to the currently available zolatone selections a couple of years back. They don't make the original color combination (dark grey speckle on a light gray base) or heavy duty formulation anymore. (I suspect something to do with modern VOC requirements.) I was told it was possible to have the Zolatone manufacture do a custom color match (in the current formulas)--for something like $100, but I didn't bother.
In my case, all but a small inside corner of a bottom cupboard had been painted over several times by previous owners so I was going to have to repaint the cabinets inside and out anyway. I decided to pick a base color I was happier with (the original was a gray with muddy brown undertones) then experiment with textured rollers and hand spattering.
I did a fast coat in the new base color and lived with it a while to see if I liked it. I do and will refinish the cabinets properly over the next month. As for the splatter, the zolatone finishes used over the years varied quite a bit. In my home, it was flat splatter (not bumpy strands) which makes it easier to mimic. Of the textured rollers I've tried, I found a seasponge looking roller seemed to give the best imitation of the original speckled look. Once I've completed the base coat, I'll practice applying the texture roller in out-of-sight areas until I'm comfortable with my technique.
One word of caution, be sure to use an good quality oil-base paint for the cabinets (not latex)--Benjamin Moore makes one called Ironclad. Latex doesn't wear well in high touch areas like a kitchen--it also tends to make your sliders stick.
Good luck.
jake
I was at the Ace Hardware yesterday and they have a "sanded" texture paint that is a two step process. The top coat contains little black and white specks. The zolatone on the interior of my cabinet has very fine black specks that are similar in size, but not quite as rough as the sanded paint. I'm thinking that I might try that.
FWIW, Dutch Boy "Granite Impressions" is a dead ringer for my Zolatone which has very fine speckles. I don't know if it can be custom tinted. It's applied with a special foam roller.
