Cabinet Painting 101

John
by John
I'm back on Hometalk with a post on cabinet painting basics. I've learned this basic approach after building my own kitchen and several built-ins. It's a 7 or 8 step process that starts with a bare cabinet and ends with a fully painted cabinet ready for installation.
Here are the 8 steps:
1. Prep work. After the cabinets were built, I filled in any small brad nail holes with white wood filler. I then sanded each cabinet with a 120 grit sandpaper using my random orbital sander. I avoided rounding over any corners or edges with the sander. I want all of my edges to be fairly crisp at this point. Once every piece had been sanded at 120 grit, I switched to 220 and repeated the same process. Afterwards I used a compressed air nozzle to blow off any sawdust. Some people absolutely avoid using compressed air to do this, but I think it works fine.
Starting with a bare wood cabinet
2. Staging. Since I’m going to be spraying on the primer, I moved all of the cabinets, doors and shelves into the garage. I used plastic painters tarp and covered the entire floor with plastic. I also draped plastic over our shoe rack and our daughters strollers and toys.


3. Corners. I used a block of wood with some 220 grit sand paper and knocked down all of the corners on every piece. I apply very little force as I run the sandpaper block across all the edges. Again, not looking to round over the edges, just slightly dull them. A corner that gets knocked down will hold the paint better than a sharp edge.


4. More air. I use my compressed air hose that I have piped into my garage and blow off any additional dust that may have built up from moving the cabinets up and rounding over the edges.
Primer should be enough to for all bare wood
5. Raising the grain. Since I’ll be using a waterborne primer, I’ll need to raise the grain. When wood grain absorbs water after it’s been sanded, the wood grains will rise and cause the finish to feel rough. So to make the process easier, you intentionally raise them by getting them wet and then you sand them back down by hand. After they’ve been knocked back down, they won’t rise again. Sounds crazy, but that’s just how it is. To raise the grain, I fill up my HVLP gun with warm water and blast all the cabinets with a light coating of water mist. After an hour of drying time, I lightly sand the cabinets with some 220 grit sandpaper by hand and then blew off any dust with the compressed air.


6. Primer. I used Benjamin Moore’s Fresh Start latex primer. I used it because it’s low-odor, low-VOC and is sprayable. As I mentioned, latex isn’t ideal and it came out just okay. It sprayed a bit chunky from the HVLP system I use, but ended up leveling out ok and seemed to get the job done. In the past, I’ve used a shellac based primer from Zinsser, specifically the BIN primer, which sprayed absolutely perfectly. Thought I’d try something different this time. I’ll probably go back to the BIN for my next project.
Here's a sneak peek at our finish coat.
7. Sand. After the primer dried, I went back and sanded all the cabinets again using a 220 grit sandpaper by hand. Using a power tool for this may remove too much paint.


8. Finish Paint. For the finish coat, I’m using two coats of Sherwin Williams Pro Classic in Ultra White. It’s the same color as the rest of the trim in the office so it will match the baseboard and crown molding. I bought it in satin instead of semi-gloss though, since I don’t want the cabinets to be too shiny. The crown and baseboard molding WILL be semi-gloss, however. The Pro Classic is an acrylic enamel that it designed for cabinet and trim work. Since it’s an enamel, it will harden and will resist pulling off if I set a book or computer down on it for example (a characteristic referred to as “blocking”). Instead of spraying it, I’m brushing it on. This is also intentional. First off, it’s much easier then spraying. Secondly, it will have a more built-in look if it isn’t perfectly smooth. If this were a stand alone kitchen cabinet set, then I would probably try spraying all the coats. This high quality paint levels very well so you are much less likely to see brush marks. I believe it’s equivalent to Benjamin Moore’s Satin Impervo, which I used on my first house and also loved.
John
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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