Painting Cupboards

We are planning to do a little remodeling in our kitchen. We plan to replace the doors and drawer fronts on the 24-year-old cabinets with those white, vinyl-coated ones. The sheets of vaneer that you stick onto the sides of the cabinets only come 24" wide so we are thinking of painting those surfaces. How do we do this? Is there a lot of prep. work to be done to the surface first?

Betty

Answers:

Painting Cupboards

Painting, if done well, requires a lot of prep work. With something as important as cabinets, you want to make sure it is done right. Make sure that the previous finish is prepared so the paint will stick. This can be done either with a stripping chemical or by a thorough sanding. Sometimes covering with shellac or another primer will help. Otherwise the paint may not cover well. Your best bet would be to talk to the paint department of your hardware store, possibly bringing in one of the cabinet doors so they can advise you what will work. - Staff (10/10/2002)

By ThriftyFun

Painting Cupboards

Thanks, "Staff". Guess what? We changed our minds and have torn all the cabinets out and had new ones installed. It's been a very long process (since October, it is now January) because the company we got them from kept sending various parts in the wrong shade of white. I will finally get my stove installed, hopefully, this weekend!

My best advice to anyone interested is to talk to customers of the cabinet company you are thinking of using before purchasing. The lumber company we got these cabinets through are so disgusted with the cabinet company that they are no longer going to handle that brand! (01/17/2003)

By alpenlite

Painting Cupboards

I moved into a home a few years ago that was built in 1973 and still had the original dark wood kitchen cabinets. We remodeled on the cheap by hand sanding all the cabinets and electric sanding all the doors. We then hand painted the cabinets with a quality white oil based paint and sent the doors/drawers to a professional painter who used a electric sprayer. The doors came out like new! The professional painter was able to paint them flawlessly with several coats of paint. He even tightened up some of the joints of drawers for us.

Then we purchased all new hardware in a brushed silver and and the kitchen cabinets looked like new! It's been a few years and they still look good, very little chipping. There is bound to be a few bangs against the doors - I just touched them up with some spray enamel on a Q-tip. I've only had to do this once.

Oil based paint really looks great on wood - it's got a high gloss and seems to soak into the wood better than Latex.

I can't remember exactly what we paid - the painter got us a catalog of hardware and we got a deal on it. Maybe a few dollars a door. He charged us about $15 a door and we saved by painting the cabinets ourselves and sanding. If we had had the time, we could have saved even more by renting a paint sprayer and spraying the doors ourselves. Hand painting the doors probably would have been fine - it just looked so much more flawless with a paint sprayer.

Alexis (06/28/2003)

By alexandra