Painting kitchen cabinets

Linda Simmons
by Linda Simmons
II painted my cabinets previously. I now would like to do again. There are areas where the paint has come off. Do I have to sand all the paint off? Not sure what to do.
  2 answers
  • The reason for the paint peeling was prep what was not properly done. While you may have sanded all the cabinets and door fronts you failed to remove any built up grease on them. When you sanded the finish you effectively sanded the grease into the wood surface. While this may had allowed the paint to stick short term, over time it has caused the finishes to fail. What you should consider doing is to strip the cabinet down to bare wood, clean and start fresh. Additional coats of paint will again fail where the paint has yet to peel. Also the results will be much more professional. Sanding the wood as it is, will not removed the issue that has caused the paint to peel, but it will create a low spot on the front of the cabinet that will need to be built up to bring the sanded spots up to the older finish level. This is very difficult to do, even for pros. So strip the cabinets and start from fresh wood.
  • Clean well with TSP and then strip and sand. You may want to use TSP again on the bare wood to ensure you get all the grease & grime off before refinishing again.