Keeping finished cabinets looking new

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We believe that remodeling a kitchen or bath is an investment that should be done right the first time. Looking after the result afterwards asks for very little, but it asks regularly, and most of the damage a cabinet suffers over twenty years comes from the small things being left undone.

Cleaning is the shortest chapter. A soft cloth, warm water and a little mild detergent handles almost everything on a cured cabinet finish. What does harm is the category of product sold to make cleaning effortless: ammonia, bleach, solvent wipes, abrasive creams and the silicone-heavy sprays that build a film and then make any later touch-up impossible. Wipe spills near the sink and the dishwasher door quickly, because the joint at the bottom edge of a door is where standing water eventually gets in.

Humidity does the slow work. Solid timber moves across the grain with the seasons, and a panel that shrinks in a dry winter will show a fine unpainted line at its edge and close it again in summer. That movement is normal. What is not normal is the extreme: a house left shut and unheated for months, or a room that runs at kitchen humidity all day with no extraction, will cause joints to open further than they should. An extractor that is actually used, and a bathroom door left ajar after a shower, prevent most of it.

Hardware needs a few minutes a year. Doors settle, and a modern hinge has adjustment screws for side, depth and height, so a reveal that has drifted can be brought back to a line rather than lived with. Drawer runners repay a wipe of their tracks; loose handle screws should be tightened before the movement enlarges the hole.

Heat and light are the remaining two. Steam vented directly upward from a kettle or a dishwasher opened at the end of its cycle will lift a door edge in time, and moving the kettle a foot is cheaper than a repair. Sunlight changes the colour of most timbers and of most finishes; it does so evenly if nothing stands in the way, and unevenly if a canister sits in the same place on a worktop for five years.

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