Dramatic Change by Painting Cabinets

Maria
by Maria
Our kitchen cabinets needed some updating. They originally had a thin coat of varnish that was beginning to peel and wear off. After much debating and scouring of the Internet, we decided to paint. Below are some before pictures.
I really underestimated how big this project was! We started over the 4th of July weekend thinking we could knock most of it out in three days. Ha!! Not even close!
Just removing the doors and hardware took ages because a bunch of the screws were stripped. Ugh!
Now the real work began. We thoroughly cleaned the cabinets, inside and out, with TSP. Next, we lightly sanded all the surfaces, wiped with a damp rag and then a tack cloth. Time for the primer! We used Sherwin Williams all purpose primer
Finding a spot to lay all the doors was a bit tricky, but we made room on the basement floor, placing each door on 2x4s to raise them off the floor.


After the primer was dry, we did another light sanding and wiped again with the tack cloth. Time for paint!
Overhead cabinets before the doors went back
We decided to do 2 colors, white on the glass front overheads and a light grey (Sherwin Williams Intellectual Grey Pro Classics) on the base cabinets. Our countertops are concrete and the two colors worked really well to pull it all together.


We did two coats of paint with a light sanding between each coat. Be sure to let them dry completely before sanding!
Base cabinets. Looking good!
And here is the final product! We absolutely love how it turned out! It was a lot of work and took us 2 weeks to complete, but it was well worth it!!
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  • Jeanine Jeanine on Nov 08, 2015
    I wish....my husband would be very, very angry if I painted our "lovely" outdated honey oak cabinets. There was even drama when I updated the hardware.
  • 169756 169756 on Nov 09, 2015
    The slat design on these cabinets just screamed 'PAINT ME A LIGHT COLOR PLEASE'! Great choice.
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