Painting Cabinets

I was really nervous about painting my kitchen cabinets. My biggest fear was them ending up with brush strokes and drip marks and look painted, and they didn't! But I also knew I was not willing to spend thousands of dollars on new cabinets. I read a couple tutorials online, including this one from Young House Love. I relied mostly on the guys from my local Sherwin-Williams for picking out the paint and tools.

TOOLS

I used a 1.5" angled brush for the crevices

of the cabinets, and 4" foam rollers for a smooth finish.

I don't know much about this primer and paint

but it's what the paint guy recommended.

The primer covered really well and the

paint went on nice and smooth.

PREPPING

I removed all the cabinet doors and numbered

them so I wouldn't forget which went where.

I removed all the old nasty

hardware from the doors.

Ladies, if you don't have a mini electric

screw driver, GET ONE! My husband's

is way too big for my hands, and this

little guy was a God-send for this project.

I set up some make-shift saw horses in our garage.

I would highly recommend this.

You're going to spend a lot of time with these doors,

so save your knees/back and get them at a good

painting height for you.

Also, since the doors will be drying for days,

you'll want to protect them from the weather.

TID BIT

I started with my doors front side down on the saw horses with the idea that when I flipped them, if the paint smudged, it would be on the back of the door and not the front where it would be more noticable.

SAND

After I had all of this set up I was ready to either completely ruin my cabinets or end up with a beautiful kitchen. I did a light hand sanding with a 80 grit sandpaper block. The goal with the sanding is to gently rough up the surface so the primer adeheres the best it can. I did not spend a lot of time or effort on this. Just a couple swipes then used a damp clothe to remove the sanding dust.

PRIME

With my 1.5" angled paint brush I first did a light coat of primer in all the angled partions of the doors. I then went back with my 4" roller and covered the entire door. The foam roller would not work to get into the little crevices, but the paint brush does not apply as smooth of a coat. So using the brush first and the roller second gives great covered and a smooth finish. The goal is a light even coat. It's tempting to apply a lot of primer (or paint) to cover better, but this will end up looking splotchy and uneven. Resist the urge and I promise you won't regret it.

Door backs covered with one

coat of primer.

After the door backs were covered in primer, I primed the boxes of the cabinets. This gave the doors a chance to dry a little before applying the paint. I used this back and forth method for each coat of paint also. The primer recommended waiting an hour, but it was the next day before I was able to apply the first coat of paint.

PAINT

I used the same brush-then-roll method for the paint. With the first coat of paint the primer was still showing through. Not only was the primer showing through, but the paint color looked much lighter than it was supposed to. Not to worry, it gets better.

After the backs were covered in 2 coats of paint (about an hour to dry in between) I let them dry for 2 days before flipping them over and repeating the whole process. I did NOT want my beautiful paint job to stick to the saw horses, so this is where patience came in handy (and I'm not a patient person). This is also where your couple of light coats of paint, instead of thick coats, come into play. It would take so much longer for the paint to dry.

FREAK OUT

At about this stage in the process, my husband decided to tell me the green looked like "that 70s color green." You mean AVOCADO GREEN?? This was after 6 hours of painting on Sunday night. And I had a complete melt down over my color choice. Avocado green was definitely not my goal. I was VERY particular about the color green this was supposed to be, thanks to my inspiration kitchen.

I chose Dried Thyme, from Sherwin-Williams.

DEFINITELY NOT AVOCADO GREEN.

So I sat in the kitchen and cried while surrounded by my avocado green cabinets. I looked at them from different angles, different lights turned on, upside down, right side up. Anything to see another color besides AVOCADO GREEN. Finally, like a good artist, I gave up for the night and hoped to see something different with fresh eyes in the morning.

Hmmm, nope, these were still very yellow cabinets the next morning with fresh eyes and fresh light. Then, some how, I realized it was the inner cabinet color that was completely throwing off the green. The inner cabinets are a yellowish/orange wood color that was pulling all the yellow from the Dried Thyme. So I grabbed some cabinet doors and placed them as they should be and WA-LA! No more AVOCADO GREEN! It's amazing how a little thing like that can completely screw the color. See how NOT AVOCADA GREEN the cabinets are?

Moral of the story, don't freak out.

BEFORE AND AFTER