Hello
Friends!I promised a tutorial on
how I painted my kitchen cabinets, and I'm making good on it (finally). I
apologize for the delay, but these things take time, right? (Or maybe I was
just trying to forget the experience altogether before reliving it in
tutorial-form).If you're interested in
reading about this project in process, you can read about it here and here.
You can see the kitchen reveal here
and the full evolution of the kitchen in photos here.I apologize in advance on the length of this post,
but I wanted to make sure I covered everything in one fell swoop. That said,
I'm sure I forgot something, so feel free to ask any questions you may
have.
I did a great deal of
planning and research before tackling this project, and I hope you're able to
learn from my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.First things first.
These are some of the most important things to know and consider before taking
on a project like this.1. Unless you have
hired help (or a household that will take on all of your responsibilities while
working on this), the rest of your house will suffer during this
process.Ok, maybe I'm being a bit
dramatic here, but this was my personal experience. However, I should preface
this by also mentioning that I work full-time (outside of the home), and spent
just about every non-working moment on this project in order to get it done.
So, for me, this meant that my typical laundry "pile" turned into a laundry
"mountain". The entire house was a wreck, and the hubby and kids had to fend
for themselves for the 2-3 weeks that I spent focused on painting. My kids may
or may not have eaten cereal out of the box for dinner several nights in
a row.2. Invest in help
from the experts.I had three big questions
in researching this project:
- How do I best
prep my cabinets for painting?
- What kind of
paint do I use?
- How do a I
choose a paint color?
I looked at a lot of
different kitchen cabinet projects online, which was helpful, but I urge you to
talk to the pros at your local paint store. I'm not talking about the teenager
that is working at Lowe's. I went to a paint store where the guys working there
knew their stuff. I brought in one of my cabinet doors and they could tell me
immediately what kind of prep work I needed to do and the best paint to do the
job.I also went to a
builder's supply center and looked at different cabinet finishes to find the
color/finish I wanted to have in my own home. I took cabinet samples home and
decided on colors based on those samples. The awesome guys at the paint store
did a color match on the samples, and I'm thrilled with the
result.Here are the samples I
used and had color matched for the island and the kitchen cabinets.
3. What is the best
method to get the job done and make it look professional?I know there are a lot of
opinions and methods out there, but after painting the kitchen island, (using a
sprayer for the doors, and hand painting the frame), I knew that painting the
cabinets with a brush would not produce the look that I wanted. Everyone is
different, but my cabinets have a lot of raised panels and nooks and crannies,
just screaming for drips and brush marks, despite my best efforts.
The
clincher for me was seeing this video of someone
painting kitchen cabinets with an HVLP sprayer. HVLP = High Volume, Low
Pressure. It is a dream for a project like this since you have so much control
over the spray in terms of volume and area. You can dial it down to a targeted,
narrow spray for corners and small areas, or you can open it up to give you a
much broader spray as well. I didn't buy the sprayer in the video, but the seed
was planted. I knew this was the way to go (for me).However, these
paint guns can be expensive, since they hook up to a turbine. But, I did some
(more) research, and found one that I could hook up to our air compressor (ours
is a 6 gallon 150psi, which was more than enough power) for a fraction of the
cost. Enter Gleempaint.com and this Wagner HVLP Conversion Gun of
Awesomeness.*
(*I don't get paid for
recommending this spray gun, nor is it called a Gun of Awesomeness. I just
think it is.)So, let's get to the
details. How did I prep my cabinets? What kind of paint did I use? What
finish did I choose?Paint
PrepSince my cabinets didn't
have a glossy finish on the to begin with, I started by giving them a light
sanding, and then used Krud Kutter Gloss-Off, which is a great all-in-one
cleaner AND deglosser. So, you can kill two birds with one stone with this
product.
You can see the primer
and paint that I used here as well. Fresh Start Superior Primer and Advance
paint by Benjamin Moore. Again, I'm going on the advice of the experts here (he
recommended a different primer for glossy surfaces, but I can't remember what).
I cannot say enough good things about this Advance paint. Oh. my. goodness.
The paint store guy/expert said, "It's revolutionary." He said that it's
basically an oil-based paint that acts like a latex (even though it is a latex
paint). You get all of the good points of an oil-based paint, with none of the
negative. It hardens like an oil, wears like an oil, but cleans up like a latex
and it doesn't smell like an oil! See?
Revolutionary.But, before you can get
moving with your actual priming/painting, you need to remove your cabinet doors
and drawers. I highly recommend putting together some sort of numbering system
so that you don't lose track of what goes where. While it all seems to make
sense when you're planning, trust me that you will be glad you did this when
your paint-weary brain goes to put the doors and drawers back.
TIP: I started
out my labeling like this, but ended up putting the post-it notes INSIDE the
cabinet door and drawer frames and taping the number (with a little description)
with painter's tape on the actual door/drawer. The description came in handy -
i.e., left bottom, right of stove. Just trust me on this.
Below, my cabinet coding
translates to - Right of stove, cabinet #28, right bottom (RB). Believe me,
when you're exhausted and swimming in a Sea of Cabinets that
need to be put back in their proper place, you'll be thankful for this little
extra help.
You will also need to
tape off the insides of the cabinets, the countertops, floor, even some of the
ceiling. If you're planning on painting the walls, do it after you paint the cabinets -
you'll save some time and trouble in taping off the walls in addition to
everything else. This was, by far, my least favorite part of this project.
Taping off the insides of cabinet frames is
harder than it sounds. But, I can offer you some advice that I learned along
the way. TIP: Tape off the
bottom, sides and top of the frame first (newspaper works well for this), and
then tape off the back of the inside frame. You can see what I mean
here:
Versus here where I was
trying to tape off right at the edge of the inside frames. Don't ask me why it
took me so long to figure this out, but it was a maddening process. (And don't
mind the water spot on the contractor paper - it's from the water dispenser in
the fridge. I swear.)
TIP: When you take off your
cabinet hinges, put them in Ziploc baggies and tape them to the inside frame of
that cabinet. This makes rehanging much simpler! You will need to go all
Dexter-like and tape off any open areas in your kitchen to avoid spray particles
from floating through your house.
And really, if you want
to paint the frames with a brush, you could do that and save some of the
trouble. But, since my frames had a lot of raised panels, I wanted the clean
look that the HVLP sprayer provides, and it was worth the extra prep
work.
You will also need to set
up a staging area and a "spray booth" for painting your cabinet doors and
drawers. If it's warm enough, you can do this in your garage. I ended up
setting up shop in our basement storage area. The great part about this space
is that there are doors that lead to the outside, so I could open them up for
ventilation. Plus, it gave me room to create my little spray booth and space to
let my cabinets dry.
You can see that I have a
little table set up here, with a piece of MDF (that is actually a large storage
shelf). I nailed five finish nails on this board so that I could easily
maneuver around the cabinet door to paint and not worry about the door sticking
to anything when I had to move it. The same holds true for the area outside of
my spray booth, where the cabinets were set to dry. Since I was painting both
the front and the back of my cabinets, I wanted to keep the drips to a minimum,
as well as the possibility of them sticking to anything while drying, and the
nails allowed for this.
Note: I obviously
removed the hardware before doing this, and also used Elmer's wood putty in one
of the holes since I was going with knobs vs. pulls on the cabinet doors. Make
sure you plan out the placement of your knobs and pulls before you start
painting, to avoid wasting time at the end of the process making adjustments
that would require more priming and painting.
Now the fun begins!
Priming and painting!
Before you begin spraying your cabinets, practice
on a large piece of cardboard or an old box so that you can get the hang of the
spray gun and figure out how to best adjust the settings. It's really very
simple to use and I promise you that it doesn't take long to get the hang of
using it.
You
can easily control the flow of the paint, direction and diameter of the spray
and the amount of air pressure as you go along. It just takes some
experimenting to get used to it. This was my first time using it, and you saw
my results!
Some
diagrams from gleempaint.com to help explain what I'm talking about here (and
again, I'm NOT getting paid!)
Paint spray patterns:
 |
| www.gleempaint.com |
Paint pattern
size:
 |
| www.gleempaint.com |
Air and paint flow
control:
 |
| gleempaint.com |
TIP: If you're
going to paint both sides of your cabinet doors, start by painting the inside
of the cabinet first. That way, if you make any mistakes or have problems,
you'll learn early and it will be on an inconspicuous part of the cabinet.
Plus, this way the cabinets will end up drying with the outside of the cabinet
facing UP, and you don't have to worry about any potential scratches or
indentations from the nails that are used to balance your cabinets for drying.
You will have a freshly painted cabinet surface when you rehang your
doors.
Start by priming the
outside edge of the door with a narrow spray, making sure that you cover the
outside edges of the door.
Then, fill in the center
area, ensuring complete coverage.
Carefully pick up the
door and move it to the drying area. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. ;-)
Once you get into a
rhythm, you can blow through the doors relatively quickly. The priming probably
took the longest, because I only used one coat of primer and wanted to be sure I
covered the doors really well. I followed the primer with two coats of paint.
Once you get started, it's a hurry up and wait kind of process. For the
primer, I gave it a good 24 hours to dry for each side. For the paint, it's a
16 hour wait time in between coats, which essentially amounts to a whole day for
each coat. For each side.
TIP: Clean your HVLP spray gun
after you're done for the day. It's really easy, so
don't be intimidated! All I had to do was empty the paint out of the spray cup,
fill it with warm water, and spray it out until the water ran clear. (Of
course, instructions are provided with the spray gun). Also, you don't need to
clean the needle every time, as indicated in the directions. That is something
that needs to be done more occasionally (I read this on the gleempaint.com
website).
So, do the math. Two
sides, one coat of primer, two coats of paint. You're talking about at least
week of just painting and waiting. Then you want to let them sit and cure a bit
before you rehang them. I recommend 2-3 days of cure time once you have
completed all of the priming and painting.
While your doors are curing you can tackle the
frames (or at least that's what I did). I saved this piece for last, because
this is what rendered my kitchen pretty much inoperable since you're taping
EVERYTHING off in order to get a clean spray of just the frames. The same
process holds for the frames also:
-
Lightly sand the frames (I used 220 grit
sandpaper)
-
Remove excess dust and wipe clean with tack
cloth
-
Clean and degloss the frame surface with Krud
Kutter
-
Prime cabinet frames and allow to dry 24
hours
-
Lightly sand and use tack cloth before
painting
-
Paint cabinet frames with 2-3 coats of paint,
waiting 24 hours in between coats
-
Wait
2-3 days for paint to cure before rehanging doors
TIP: Since gravity is working
against you on the cabinet frames, I recommend using a fine spray so that you
avoid drips as much as possible. If you do get drips, the paint experts told me
to avoid sanding too much in between because the paint can gum up since it's not
cured. If you have drips, you might want to wait until it's fully cured and
then sand, as it will be more "sand-friendly". You can touch up with a small
artist's brush.
The
paint experts told me that it takes 30 days for the Advance paint to fully
cure. Don't panic - it's not like you're going to be working with sticky
cabinet doors or anything. Just use a little extra caution in the first
month.
Once
your doors and frames have cured enough to reassemble your kitchen, the fun part
of putting your kitchen back together begins! From here, you can install new
hardware if you have it, reinstall your hinges (or replace your old ones with
new), and then rehang your doors and drawers.
If
you're installing new hardware and need help on where to place it, pick up one
of these handy little tools to save you some time and headache:
 |
| Amazon.com |
Now, sit back and enjoy
your new kitchen!
I hope you found this
tutorial helpful, and most importantly, I hope you'll begin to see that you can
do this project!I think I'm
the fifth person in as many days to post cabinet painting tutorials! Here are
some links to some other resources that might be useful:Melissa at 320
SycamoreTraci at Beneath
my HeartSherry and John at Young
House LoveMarian at Miss
Mustard SeedLinking up to:
Home
Stories A to Z - Tutorials and Tips Link PartySavvy
Southern Style - Wow Us Wednesday
1. NOBODY MEDITATION.For 15 minutes every day sit in stillness and silence. Sit tall. Close your eyes. Follow your breath. Imagine all the roles that you play washing off of you like water off a duck’s back. See the masks you wear being peeled off. Practice letting go.
