Glazing kitchen cabinets is a great way to create an older or antiqued look for a kitchen that has been recently upgraded or remodeled. The glaze cast on a painted surface like a cabinet gives the appearance that it has aged over several years or decades, and will nicely match many antique elements in many of today's kitchens. It can be added to cabinets and surfaces that are stained, painted, or even stenciled, creating a wide variety of decorative touches. Sometimes it is added selectively along edges or bevels in the door pattern, highlighting elements of the woodwork itself.
Glaze is a mix of paint with either water or a solvent. Sometimes people will refer to this process as a "wash" as well. A wash is sometimes considered to be the painting process using only water as a solvent, where a glaze has the paint thinned with a glazing solution.
You can buy premixed glazes, or more often it is simple enough to make your own unique paint mixture. It's common to use a mix of one part paint to one part solvent, but depending on the look you want it can be one to three or three to one, giving a darker or lighter mix. This can be done with oil based paints as well, but in that case you will want to use a solvent, as water and oil don't mix too well.
As with any home improvement project, proper preparation is a big part of success. You will do best if you take the cabinet doors that you want to glaze off the hinges and work on them on a work surface, where they can be laid flat. Of course, remove the existing hinges, knobs, and other hardware. You'll probably want to cover the area with drop cloths. Make sure that the surfaces you are painting are clean, using a commercial cleaner if they are not just freshly painted with the underlying coat of paint.
Putting on the actual glaze is a fairly easy process, but you want to be careful about your choice of brushes and how you actually apply the glaze.
