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Our recommendation to fix white cabinets that have yellowed is to do a thorough sanding and precleaning and recoat with the following products:

There are several ways to determine whether a surface is dry:

OIL BASED products are dry if they are no longer tacky and do not emit a smell.

WATER BASED products are dry if they no longer feel cool to the touch and a powder will form with light sanding.

Haze (the technical term is blush) is caused by too many coats applied too quickly. A recoat time of 12 hours is not enough dry time when applying over an EXISTING finish. To remove the blush or haze, you can either wipe the area with a strong solvent, like xylene or lacquer thinner, or you can try sanding out the haze and then reapply the topcoat.

This response is true of prepping and existing finish on furniture, but kitchen cabinets are more problematic because they are work areas where grease, steam, food splatters and oil from hands are common. Prep is basically degreasing and abrading the surface for better adhesion. Oil or substances on hands really show up on a failed re-finish around doorknobs and hands if the surface is not cleaned thoroughly.

There are several reasons:

1. The cabinets were not prep cleaned and sanded properly. Sanding and cleaning are an essential part of any refinishing process.

In most cases, you can use a 220 sanding pad to scuff the surface and clean with a 50|50 mix of water and denatured alcohol.

All bright white paint will yellow slightly with time, even without topcoat. You have probably tried to touch up white woodwork in your home after several years and noticed that the new paint is brighter.

But white and light paints can react if clear coated with a waterbased finish; water-based topcoats are reactive and may draw out substances in the wood such as tannins, dyes or unknown substances in existing finishes causing the topcoat to yellow. This is an industry-wide issue and can happen right away, years later or never.

There is no easy solution to this problem. General Finishes Milk Paint has strong adhesion properties but there are several reasons this finish could fail: