Keystone Wood Finishing Facts | Wood Cabinet Finishes

Professional Finishing Services for Cabinetry Components

Keystone offers the option of professional finishing services with your cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and other wood components orders. Choose from paints, stains, and glazes and accent glaze options or a custom color match to your specifications. View our Keystone Wood Specialties Finishing Facts below to decide on the best option for your next job.

Paints, Stains, Glazes

PAINTS

Our paint grade products are coated with high-quality industrial-grade primers and paints that exhibit excellent moisture-resistant and non-yellowing properties. Paints are sprayed on for a uniform finish.

GLAZES / ACCENT GLAZES

Glazes can be applied to any paint, stain, or natural finish to give depth and definition to the product.

STAINS

All stains are top coated with two coats of catalyzed varnish.

ELITE STAINING PROCESS FOR MAPLE

Our exclusive ELITE Staining Process greatly reduces the potential for an inconsistent, blotchy look that can occur when staining certain wood species like Maple – especially with darker stains. Our two-step ELITE Staining Process produces a smooth and even tone on each individual component and a more consistent appearance across all the components within that order. The ELITE Staining Process is our standard staining option for Maple and is recommended for Birch, Alder and Pine.

Note: This process is only used on the fronts and edges of our doors and drawer fronts, with a 1-step wiping stain used on the backs.

WIPING STAINS

Wiping stains are a 1-step process where stains are sprayed on and hand-wiped to achieve a smooth and thorough coverage. Our 1-step wiping stain is recommended for Cherry, Red Oak, White Oak, Walnut, Hickory.

SPRAY STAINS

Spray stains offer an exceptionally even tone and pristine finish on species such as Maple. However, due to the nature of spray stains, some framing bead or panel raise profiles may result in a “halo” effect where the stain is slightly lighter in color at the edge of the profile. Since this is more evident with darker tones versus lighter tones, our standard Spray Stains are only offered in the following colors: Champagne, Buckskin, Caramel, Tawny and Almond Shell. We can accommodate requests for custom color matches for Spray Stains.

CUSTOM COLOR MATCHING

We can match any paint or stain. Just send us a paint chip or stain sample, and we will match it!

POLISH SANDING

After sanding with 180 grit on a wide belt sander, cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and face frames are sanded with a palm random orbit sander with 150 grit sandpaper to remove belt and cross-grain scratches. We recommend that you prep your cabinet doors, drawers, and frames for finishing to ensure a uniform appearance with your cabinets.

PRIMED FOR PAINT

Unfinished components can also be ordered as Primed for Paint. Our Primed for Paint service includes puttying gaps and imperfections, whitewood sanding and prime painting with a high-grade primer. We recommend that you prep your primed products for topcoat to ensure a uniform appearance with your cabinets.

Keystone uses a solvent based primer. We recommend that you check the compatibility of your topcoat with our primer before finishing your components. For questions regarding our primers, please call 717.299.6288.

SHEEN

Unless otherwise specified, all finishes are 40 sheen (medium gloss). Other common options are 5 sheen (low gloss) and 60 sheen (high gloss). Our paint is 20-30 sheen. Contact customer service for more details.

TOUCH-UP KITS & CANS

Touch-Up Kits

A touch-up kit consisting of a felt-tip stain marker and a fill stick is available to match our standard stain colors. We also offer touch-up kits for our standard paints. We recommend the purchase of a kit for each job to leave with your customer for future use.

Cans of paint or stain with your finished order

Customers who order finished products may purchase quart or gallon supplies in order to finish other parts of their project to match their Keystone order. Due to liabilities (and the fact that we are a cabinet door manufacturer, not a finish manufacturer), we are limited to what finishes and quantities we can sell. We are not able to sell any stains to a customer without a finished order of the same color in production. We use a catalyzed varnish as our “natural” finish and a tinted catalyzed varnish as a top coat for our painted orders. Since we cannot sell anything with the catalyst, any paints we sell will need to have the catalyst added. We will provide you with the catalyst number and amount to add.

A hazmat fee is applied to each can of stain that is shipped.

*Please Note: Our ELITE stains are a result of our unique ELITE staining process, so we are unable to sell an ELITE stain separately. Customers can order a wiping version or touch-up kit of the stain color and use a pre-wash or pre-treatment process to achieve a look that would resemble the ELITE staining process.

Keystone cannot be held responsible for the appearance of items finished by our customers.

ACCURACY OF COLOR SAMPLES

Keystone tries to be as accurate as possible when representing the colors of our finishes. However, due to the limits of various forms of color sampling, local lighting conditions, and the nature of wood itself, it is impossible to guarantee an absolutely exact representation of how your order will look.

Printed samples (such as our catalog) can be fairly close, but they can never completely compensate for the depth of wood grain and actual wood color. Viewing color online is the least accurate due to the virtually endless variables with monitors, handheld devices, etc.

Actual wood block samples are the most accurate. However, even here, due to the normal characteristics of real wood, the same stain finish applied on two samples of the same wood species can differ slightly. This accounts for the warmth, beauty, and value of natural wood.

Please contact us for more information about our Keystone Wood Specialties’ finishing facts. Our customer services team is ready to assist with any questions you may have.