Unsticking a Waxed Pine Kitchen

Cleaning a waxed pine door ready for painting. It’s heavy going, I can tell you

All clean and ready for painting

Here is a list of the stickiest things known to man. Well, known to this man, anyway.

1. Superglue (especially when you get it on your fingers)

2. A jelly bean you lost in the van in sweltering heat which you suddenly find while feeling around blindly for something else you dropped

3. Whatever it is babies sneeze out

4. My daughter’s recipe for honey and peanut butter “soup”, from when she was four years old

5. The surface of a 25-year-old waxed pine kitchen

I recently had an encounter with a Number 5. And I’ll be honest with you: I’m lucky I’m not still stuck to it now.

The issue with waxed pine is it’s a disaster to clean—even if you go at it regularly. And after many decades of being surrounded by cooking, frying and boiling, it’s going to accumulate a sticky layer, especially in those hard to reach places.

There are benefits. The sticky surfaces make it easy to temporarily store something. Like a toddler or a small dog you want to keep from getting underfoot. Just press them on to a kitchen cabinet door and presto! Same goes for your jars of oregano and cinnamon. No more need for a spice rack. Ditto recipe books, chef’s knives and pots.

But there are drawbacks too. Most notably, your entire kitchen becomes one big sheet of flypaper.

Unsurprisingly, owners of waxed pine kitchens eventually get them repainted. If they manage to unstick themselves and can reach their phone to ring a kitchen painter.

Preparing and painting a waxed pine kitchen

There is quite a lot of work involved in repainting waxed kitchens. You can’t simply paint over them. The paint won’t stick. It’s like painting over an oil slick. So a lot of effort goes into getting the waxy layer off. Typically, you do this by scouring the surface with wire wool doused in methylated spirits or white spirits. It’s brutal, but necessary. It also doubles the prep time for each surface in the kitchen.

Once that’s done, I don’t apply a regular primer as a first undercoat. I want to be absolutely sure the paint is going to stay on a previously waxed surface. So I use Tikkurila Otex, which is what is known as an adhesion primer. That’s right, I’m using a sticky primer to deal with a formerly sticky surface. Fight fire with fire! … Note to self: the next time I’m preparing a waxed pine kitchen maybe I should rent a flamethrower?

Once the Otex is on, I can apply a regular primer and go through my standard layering of coatings to get an immaculate finish.

The three things I hear most often from clients who have had their waxed pine kitchen transformed are:

1. It’s much easier to clean!

2. It looks amazing!

3. Where am I going to put my spices, recipe books, chef’s knives and toddler now?

I could do a nice sideline in hanging shelves and hooks, but I’m busy enough as it is.

Footnote: I have been told by the wife that I am not allowed to rent a flamethrower. My little boy is very disappointed.