Notes From Oak: Bathroom Cabinet Redo... in progress

I had a break from the painting of the kitchen cabinets and decided it was time to tackle the bathroom cabinets. I read a tutorial on www.monicalikesit.com and decided to go with staining the cabinets dark to avoid painting the whole house tones of white. When we bought the house a few supplies were left in the garage so I decided to use those instead of using the products recommended by Monica. I did however follow her directions for the process.

First I removed the doors and all the hardware. Then I sanded the cabinets a little in the garage. I used a sanding block to rough up the frames still attached to the wall.This before picture is bad lighting and makes the before appear darker than it actually was. The second photo is after sanding.

Let the fun/anxiety attack begin! I put a glove on my hand so it didn't get stain all over me and then covered the glove with one of my husbands old white socks. We had some gel stain left in the garage in a dark color, I dipped in and got busy! This is when the anxiety attack stared. It is streaky! I mean really streaky! I told my self I would do one more coat when it dried and go from there. After drying for 24 hours I did the second coat. It began looking better and I let this coat dry for another 24 hours. By the third coat of stain I was glad I chose to do this project. I let the third coat dry for about 5 days while I was out of town. Then began on the top poly coats. Again, I found some water based poly left in the garage. I got a sponge brush and did two coats of poly, allowing for 24 hours of drying time in between, making sure I went slow to avoid bubbling.