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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

How to Paint Cabinets

 The first step in cabinet painting is to pull back your hair and put on some moisturizer because if your face starts to itch it's GAME OVER. I've made that mistake too many times. Nothing shuts down arts and crafts or DIY like an itchy face.


The googly eyed bunny clip doesn't help you but it's there for the morale of others. 


The first step is to prime. I used a BIN primer and I put it on with a combination of a roller and a regular brush for the crevices. The roller made gross bubbles that popped and left little primer circles so I used the brush to even it all out. This step looked cool, almost white washed, which was our original intent...but we know that the primer will yellow over time so I powered through to the actual painting.

All of this was accomplished inside of our small house with doors and drawers balanced on canned goods all over the place. At one point we heard a crash at 3am and it was one of the cats knocking everything off of the washer and dryer. Sigh.

Next up the painting! I was really nervous about this because everyone on the Internet was freaking out about brush strokes and going to great lengths to make sure no disgusting brush strokes would show up on their precious little cabinets. Dude. Cool it with the brush strokes.

Another thing is that everyone is like, "10 simple steps to do to avoid sanding and priming."

Or, "$200 worth of products to apply to avoid sanding and priming."

Sanding was actually a fun part of this process. I found it every satisfying. And priming was an extra step but I felt like it was good practice for painting. I think it was the right way to do it.

We got Benjamin Moore Advance paint because it claimed to be self leveling and that it would act like an oil base paint. No brush strokes! Hallelujah! We got the highest gloss untinted white that was available. It was pricey but it was worth it.


Dannnng look at those doors. This paint was thick and easy to work with. I put it on with the roller because the roller made it easier to get paint onto the doors but then I evened everything out and got it where I wanted to go with a brush. When it was going on I was like, "Holy cow I can see brush stokes. I'm a failure as a DIY blogger. I need to turn in my bunny clip and give up." But then everything dried to shiny, gorgeous finish in a little bit and all was right with the world.

This paint was worth every penny and we hardly made a dent in the can!

Next up I had to sand the rest of the cabinets and prime them. But first, itchy face prep and SAFETY.


Looking good, girl. Looking safe!

Sanding the cabinet faces was easy peasy but priming was a bear. B did this for me. We had run out of BIN and were using Killz and it was a lot tougher to work with. It was clumpy and drippy. It was like a non-Newtonian primer. 

Painting the cabinet faces was another exercise in frustration. I should have vaccummed first and banished the animals outside because tiny tiny floating hairs would get into the paint and then I'd have to dig them out and start over. And self leveling paint? Awesome on a flat surface but on a vertical surface it just wants to self level....down. Thanks gravity. Thanks for nothing. You'd look for drips and then turn around for a minute and a new pool of paint would have developed. 

Also, I was trying to do this, "really quick" before I had to go to work and I was feeling rushed. When I finally got done I cleaned the brushes, closed up the paint, dumped the paint tray and went to wash my hands at the kitchen sink and leaned up against it. AH!  I had to get everything out and do that part over. 

BUT when I got home it had dried and everything looked great. 

So here it is with the doors and drawers back on! We also pulled up another layer of tile so what you're seeing is the gross old vinyl. (That is over the grosser older linoleum.)


And here is a before/during for reference.

We need to wait for the paint to cure completely before we can put on the hardware. 

What else is new over here? Garden stuff! More on that later.

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