Painting Kitchen Cabinets: Part 2

Here are the nitty-gritty details of how we painted our kitchen cabinets.

 First, the process that DIDN'T work.  I had spent 7 months researching the process, and I really felt like what I nailed down was going to be great.  Not so much.  Here is what mom and I did for 2 days:
1.  Sand doors and frame (using electric sander)
2.  Use liquid sandpaper to wipe down all doors and drawers (also called deglosser)
3.  Latex primer - Benjamin Moore Advance Water Alkyd Primer - tinted to "Distant Gray" - this is when we realized that our method was not working.  (Due to my intense frustration, I took no pictures of this process.)  Here's what happened, in words:  not only was the grain of the wood showing through, but it was showing through yellowed.  Yuck and yikes.  And no amount of latex primer would cover it up.  We tried a stain-blocking latex primer, and it still didn't work.  There are several reasons why our method failed us.  First of all, the areas that we didn't degloss (because we plum forgot) were especially stain-happy.  However, even the doors we had deglossed were riddled with stains.  The bottom line is that a latex primer does not cover stains.  After 3 coats of latex primer on many of the surfaces, I crawled back to Benjamin Moore and admitted that I needed to purchase the oil-based primer.  They kindly obliged and even gave us a new process to try.

 SOOOOOOO.......this is the final process we used to paint the kitchen cabinets.  Thankfully we broke the space into two areas - the island and the desk were part A and the rest of the cabinets were part B.  So the only space that we painted a gazillion times was part A. 
1.  Remove all doors and drawers (we kept the drawer fronts connected to the drawers - it made it tremendously simple to paint the drawer fronts)
2.  Remove hinges and pulls (we later decided to purchase new hinges and paint the pulls)
3.  Liquid sandpaper (deglosser) - after listening to the advice of my new Benjamin Moore besties, we opted not to sand part B of our kitchen.  I was nervous about it at first, but not only did it remove a step, but the deglosser really did function as liquid sandpaper.  We used paper towels to degloss every surface.  It's important to note that the deglosser "opens" the grain of the wood and allows the grain to accept a primer, so the "window of openness" is relatively short - 3-4 hours at most.
4.  Oil-based primer - Benjamin Moore Cover Stain Primer - we probably should have done 2 coats, but we only did 1.
5.  Latex paint - Benjamin Moore Advance Water Alkyd Satin in "Distant Gray."  Paint one side of the doors, paint the frame, flip the doors and paint the other side.  We completed this process 3 times.
6.  Cure, cure, cure, cure, cure.
7.  Paint pulls - we used Rustoleum spray paint in "Hammered Silver" - Daniel sanded and washed each pull and them gave each 2 coats of the spray paint.  After allowing the pulls to cure overnight, we reattached them to their respective doors and drawers. 

After allowing the recommended 72 hours to dry, we reinstalled everything.  If you look close at the picture below, you can see that we scraped about 4 inches of the popcorn around the top of the desk so we could adequately paint.  We will eventually scrape all the nasty popcorn, but for now, we scraped only where necessary.

 Take-aways:

• Do your research, but recognize that your plan might fail.
• What worked for someone may not work for you.  Your process should really vary depending on your cabinets.  When I painted the vanity in my bathroom earlier this summer, I didn't run into any of the issues that I did when painting the kitchen cabinets.

 

Downstairs bathroom vanity

• Oil-based paint is smelling and sticky, but it does work. Just buy a few cheap brushes and throw them away post-painting.  
• Don't cut any corners - if you think it needs another coat, give it another coat.  It will pay off in the long-run.
•  Allow plenty of time to cure.  You'll kick yourself if you reinstall only to find out you bumped a door while installing. 

Whew, that's it!  Total time needed to complete - 2 weeks (including curing time).  The project is not for haters of messes and/or painting, but if you can dedicate a handful of hours each day to painting, it will be worth it.  I never would have attempted the project during the school year.  Thankful I did it, thankful it's done.  Ha.


And just to keep it real, here is what our kitchen looked like during the process:

 Oh my.

 It was a long two weeks.  Lots of eating out.

Stop by tomorrow for a few decorative updates!  Happy painting!