Cabinet Painting 101
by
John
(IC: blogger)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Published September 22nd, 2014 9:13 AM
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