Cabinet re-finishing, not quite finished

When we moved into this house on October 31st 2005 the one thing that desperately needed to be done was re-finishing the kitchen cabinets, all 32 cabinets and 10 drawers. They were a grotesque John Deere Green paint with the doors stained a very blond color and the beading around the trim of the doors and drawers 'washed' with the John Deere Green, horrible! (In pictures the blond stain looks much darker than it was in person, but still the green just makes the whole thing horrible!)So now almost 5 years later I decided to just do it. I started by taking down all the doors and drawer fronts. This quickly revealed that I cannot be one of those people who have glass doors or no doors on their cabinets.

Last weekend I spent 2 days, about 12 hours each day, sanding and stripping each and every cabinet. But before I could begin I had to empty each and every cabinet, which revealed we have entirely too much crap in our kitchen. (this is just what was on the table/floor, it does not include all the stuff we had in the living room or laundry room)

Then we needed a dust barrier to minimize the amount of dust spreading to the rest of the house, we didn't want to drill holes in the wall to string up something, we didn't have sheets long enough or wide enough or enough of them to block off the very open kitchen from the rest of the house so our choices came down to going to Lowe's to buy some plastic to tape up or (my idea!) use the left over $1 rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, 4 rolls later and we had complete coverage! (between the dark blue and light blue on the left we left a small opening to walk thru)

Then the sanding began. I burned up 1 palm sander over the weekend, with just 1 cabinet left to sand! (the bottom corner is the last that needed to be done when the sander fried!)Replaced the sander and finished just before the Super Bowl started.

We ventured back to Lowe's (luckily it's about a mile from the house!) and picked out a stain, I began with testing it on a drawer front, it was so light I was not happy. I want a dark stain. So I waited for it to dry and sanded it down and tried another coat, it was better but I was very skeptical that it would be as dark as I was wanting. Today I decided to try some stain on the cabinets and it is gorgeous! (top has 1 coat of the stain)I cannot wait to finish, which will happen this weekend! The cabinets will be done, and the doors and drawer fronts should be completely done or very nearly done by Monday.