Painting Kitchen Cabinets: DURING/AFTER

Have I mentioned how unpleasant it is to paint kitchen cabinets? Having done it twice now (for reasons I will never fully understand-- I'm going to plead temporary insanity!), I will swear it on a stack of Holy Bibles: painting kitchen cabinets is pure misery!

That being said... Misery loves company, right? Here's how I did it (Don't forget to check out the "before" blog post!).

STEP 1: Make a drawing of your cabinets and label each one with a number, a letter, a nickname, WHATEVER. It doesn't need to be pretty-- just look at mine! Keep this paper handy. You will thank me for this later.

STEP 2: Figure out where the heck you're going to do this. I had a few requirements: It needed to have a door I could close, to keep both my kids and the cat out. It couldn't be windy or dusty. I decided on our upstairs guest room, which also had the advantage of having really good natural light. Plus, I could paint at all hours of the day or night, and I could wear my jammies. Bonus! I laid down a plastic drop cloth, then set up sawhorses with long 2x4 boards between them. I stuck push-pins into the boards every foot or so, so that the cabinets wouldn't rest directly on the wood. When all was said and done, I had a nifty little work area that could accommodate four of the big cabinet doors at a time. So... I knew it would take a while, but that was okay!

STEP 3: Time to take the cabinet doors and drawer fronts off. Electric screwdrivers are awesome for this! Here's where my experience came into play: I labeled every single hinge "top" or "bottom" with a piece of blue painter's tape, and put all the hardware for each door (or drawer) into a plastic baggie labeled with that cabinet's number. I also labeled each cabinet with a little piece of painter's tape. Really, it's useful stuff to have around. Buy in bulk! :)

STEP 4: Cleaning time. I squirted the deglosser onto the scrubber and went to work, removing years of grease and grime from all around the cabinets. I had no idea how filthy they were until this point. It was completely disgusting!! Anyway, I scrubbed and scrubbed and then wiped everything down multiple times with a wet rag. Then let it all dry. This step took me a long time, because I wanted to make sure the paint would adhere properly to my cabinets! No taking chance or cutting corners!

STEP 5: Finally, I started painting. Again, I was glad to have my previous experience! I started with the backs of the doors, just in case I messed up. I painted around the inner ledge, then filled in the middle panel, taking great care to follow the grain of the wood. Then I painted the two short sides, followed by the two longer ones, followed by the edges. The video below, made by the good folks at Rust-oleum, explains the technique very well! I think I did three coats of paint on the front, and only two on the back (I figured I could get away with it). Once the paint was dry, I did one layer of the top coat. And then it was on to the next set, over and over again until everything was finished! The procedure was the same for the cabinet boxes. It took forever, it was a huge pain in the butt, and it was ninety-something degrees inside the house! Yep. I'm still sticking with temporary insanity.

However... when it was all said and done, my cabinets were lovely. I can sorta-kinda-MAYBE understand why I wanted to do it all over again.

SIIIIIGH.... So pretty... And for a grand total of about $150, it really transformed the kitchen!

Unfortunately, it also made the counters look even worse. Yet another project to add to the list! It never ends!

Painting Kitchen Cabinets: BEFORE

When we bought our first home in 2005, our kitchen had these hideous hunter-green cabinet boxes with oak doors and floral-printed knobs. Really. Someone actually lived like this!

The rest of the house was pretty neutral, so I made it my mission to paint the cabinets. It took me a month. It was HORRIBLE. I swore I would never, EVER paint cabinets again. Ever. Although they did look pretty... I even made a kitchen island to match (maybe I will blog about it someday)!

I also vowed never to paint them again, simply because the paint wasn't that durable. I was constantly touching it up. It chipped, got dirty, and just generally gave me grief. NEVER AGAIN!

So, then we moved into our current house. And the cabinets were in much better shape, but...

They clashed with the floor. We have almost-200-year-old Southern Yellow Pine floors, and the cabinets were cherry. It was a lot of warm-colored-but-not-exactly-matching wood. And it drove me crazy. AND, since replacing the floor isn't going to be in the budget for a looooong time, I began to have these crazy thoughts about painting the cabinets white. Again. Only this time, I'd do some research and do a better job!

My husband, after giving me The Look, agreed to my plan. He almost always does (what a good guy!). After looking into it, I decided to buy a kit. Rust-oleum's Cabinet Transformations kit, to be precise.

It comes with a heavy-duty deglosser and scrubbers to really clean the cabinets. Then there's the paint itself ("Pure White"), a "decorative glaze" that you can apply for an antiqued effect (I didn't), and a scratch-resistant protective top coat. Rust-oleum had me at "protective top coat"-- I think that's where I had gone wrong in my previous cabinet painting endeavors! I was so excited when these babies showed up on my front porch (thanks, Amazon!).

Anyway, I picked the two hottest, most humid weeks of the year to paint the cabinets. In a house with no air conditioning, and I couldn't run a fan for fear of blowing dust particles onto my wet paint. I am a glutton for punishment, I tell ya! Stay tuned for the full report, and the "after" pics!