I need advice on refinishing kitchen cabinets with chalk paint, help!
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I have done one section of my kitchen cabinets using chalk paint and a special wax rub in for finish. I followed all directions and have let the cabinets cure for about a week but I noticed today already that I have chips of paint off in heavy use areas and they were only used one day. Before I should proceed what do I need to do to prevent this. I did not prime the cabinets as all the information I had said no need to do so with chalk paint. So I need advice on what I am doing wrong or how to prevent this. I was trying to avoid using a polyurethane finish as I like the rustic country look and also I do not like the fumes. But if that's the only way to not have this issue I will do it. BTW I have 7 children in the house and live in the country so the cabinets will be taking a degree of abuse.
8 answers
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You can't prevent it. You will have to repaint it and then use polyurethane. I just painted my cabinets with chalk paint and the same thing happened. After putting 3 coats of polyurethane I have had no problems
Melinda
on May 03, 2016
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Thanks!
Theorganicfanatic
on May 03, 2016
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Wow I didn't know, this is probably why my daughter wishes she hadn't done hers.
Kathy Bitzan
on May 03, 2016
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I did mine with 2 coats and a special sealer. No problems.
Emma Pettit
on May 03, 2016
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The most important part of the process is to clean the cabinets. I know it says no "prep work" with chalk paint, but the wood still needs to accept the paint. Kitchen cabinets quickly build up with grease and grime which does not allow the paint to cure properly. For the remaining cabinets, I would use steel wool and something like TSP to make sure the wood is completely grease free. You can find matte finish poly that really does have more a of wax finish appearance - General Finishes makes a "Flat Out Flat" finish that is great. No odor, cleans up with water, and protects the painted surface. After you poly it, you can still wax it if you decide you want to add that waxy glow to it. But it would not be necessary. Good luck!
Country Design Home
on May 04, 2016
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The way to deal with this depends on what was the coating of your cabinets and what type of paint you used. There are may so-called "chalk paint" that have a high percentage of plastic (organic solvents) components and because of that give better adhesion. If your cabinets were coated with some kind of polyurethane lack or similar lack (and the chalk paint was not applied to the bare, natural wood) it will not adhere well and will just be a powdered layer on top of a plastic layer, it's the plastic layer beneath that is going to "stand through" and the chalk will eventually peel or crackle off. Chalk paint is NOT resistant. In order to make chalk paint resistant for outdoor use or heavy use indoor wooden supports, you must mix in casein (or heavy, yoghurt/white cheese) and ammonia, I doubt this is what they gave you at the store. This mixture (chalk+casein/white cheese+ammonia) was a standard pain mixture used in old times and then it was sealed off by applying several (several!) layers of wax (bees'wax). The stuff sold todays in shops in a finish (for beauty) and is not necessarily the right sealer. If you have 7 children, it's not only the children but the adults cooking that will precipitat wer and tear, so you need something more resistent, although myself I avoid industrial solvents -based products etc.. I must admit for the kitchen (think of coffe, tea, tomato stains) I used a resin-based paint that has the color-layer + the sealer and if you prepare the cabinets and remove the current lack/paint you can achieve a look, by stretching the paint, that is similar to chalk paint. NB: in "old times" they actually repainted every year, at springtime, the chalk paint really is not that resistent.
Carole
on May 04, 2016
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I agree with previous comments about cleaning. You have to clean, clean and clean kitchen cabinetry before you start putting on the paint. Clean the flat surfaces, clean the grooves and clean all detailing. Clean the areas where the knobs and pulls are. I mean get those cabinets really clean and let them dry. Then I like to use a liquid sandpaper product to improve adhesion, even though most chalk paint experts say you can paint without sanding. Painting kitchen cabinets is tedious and the final results are directly proportional to the prep work you put into the project. I don't use wax on kitchen cabinetry surfaces. I prefer the General Finishes Flat Out Flat or their High Performance Polyurethane sealing products. Water based and very user friendly.
Melly
on May 04, 2016
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Dear OrganicFanatic,I'm happy I could be of any help and thank you for bearing over (and decoding) my typos, I have an old (too old) keyboard. The brand I used for my kitchen cabinets is a French brand called Resinence (resin+ they play on the resonnance-word). There are many products (for floors, concrete, table tops made of stone/granite etc.. wall tiles), I used the one for furniture/wooden or lackered support, it will work on any type of support. It comes in two separate products, one for the color (this you apply first) and the top coat which you can choose as glossy or mat. each product has two compoents that you mix just prior to applying the paint. I did a fairly good job of degreasing the cabinets: I used a steamer and saw all kind of dirt, I thought wasn't there, run down with the condensed water (but beware, it dissolves glue, so I did some damage here and there), then I used Cif to grate whatever was left and finally I used vinegar for rinsing the possible remains of Cif, (vinegar on a microfiber cloth). I have 14 cabinets (some half-sized in width) and when I did this I had middle-severe asthma and honestly it was fast and almost easy work. Applying the paint was reallythe easy. I didn't bother sand off anything. The coating of my cabinets as they were when I started this was some kind of industrial paint, very resistent and of the lack-type, they were cream-white and the paint had been applied so you still could see the patterns of the wood beneath, all of it because the style is supposed to be..chalkpainted cabinets from a farmhouse-style.:-) But to my mind it did not look natural, and they had a yellow framing I didn't like, it was really outdated in style. So I painted it all white (I think this color is called dove-white in French) and changed the knobs to something looking like pewter, it all ended up looking very nice. Meanwhile I became very ill with a thyroid disease and did not finish the job ...and guess wha...t I never applied the topcoat. So the look is very mat (looks good) and the wood pattern still shows through, as I only managed to apply 1 layer. It's piece of cake to clean and does not wear off. You can see the product-line using this link, it's in English, but I didn't manage to find out whether this is sold overseas or not. This company has had an enormous success in France, because their products were used in a weekend-show the concept of which was to select a house each week and the team of the show made a total makeover, like a fairytale to all these families, oftentimes jobless, lilving in an unhealthy, humid house etc... But I'm sure there must be something similar where you live. It is a double-component paint with epoxy resin, I was determined "epoxy" would never enter my house, because epoxy-based glue is so toxic. Actually this has no smell, I can tell as an asthmatic I was never bothered while working with it, nor while it dried or since. This paint is plastic-based (it does not show when you finish painting if you choose the mat finish topcoat and if you paint so that the wood beneath still shows, as mentioned I stre-ee-e-e--t-ched the paint). I applied the paint "normally". The paint is water-based as far as I remember. The only challenge is once you have mixed the two components (inside the product you find two containers and they tell you how to do) you must work fast because the paint stiffens. So it's better to buy small containers/quantities and do the job in several phases, else mixing too much product in one batch will force you to set an impossible pace and/or loose product, it becomes more and more like chewing-gum and very fast you find out that's it, and that you must stop anyway. This is the link: http://www.plastics-themag.com/snapshots/universal-paint Now, another brand made a more recent version where you don't need the topcoat, but I cannot recall the name. From what you describe of your cabinets and out of how you describe the look you would like to achieve, I believe the best would be to degrease for instance using what I used, then to remove paint here and there if everywhere is too great a job, with sandpaper or an electrical tool (degrease first, otherwise you'll use a lot of sandpaper just degreasing before you get to the paint) so that you get to have wood-pattern. This will enable you to achieve a "used" look (I forgot what it's called in English). But plain white without seeing the wood gives my cabinets a fine "chalk-painted" look anyway (the wood is only showing on some cabinets) and is very cosy and peaceful in a kind of farmhouse-style. It's the knobs that give the ultimate touch. P.S. this resin-based paint also has a lot of success because when used with the glossy topcoat, one can completely change the look of "boring" 70's looking cabinets into high-tech super-glossy brand-new looking cabinets (in France people just had a craving for red "high-tech" sle kitchen cabinets some years ago). That's why you'll see many showcase photos of red cabinets on this French company's webst (they think everyone wants glossy red lackered cabinets in their kitchen) but the whites are fine for giving the chalk-painted look many of us like. PPS. If you want to mix your own paint, you can. I did this in my bedroom, it's today as when I painted 12 years ago (!!!) and I have dogs (German Schaeffers). I coated the walls after painting with a mix I made myself, with melted bees' wax, this was the tiring part, polishing it. The end resultfor this topcoat/sealer was so protective of the chalk paint, that one wall, I wanted to repaint some years ago to have a contrast color, would'n accept any paint, I had to sand the bees'wax off. The colors are very beautiful , because chalk paint gives a very specific luminosity to the (natural) pigments you use. If you want "typical" chalk-painted cabinets you just mix the paint without adding pigments. A typical recipe for an opaque " a bit heavy" paint for wooden supports is chalk+filler+casein+ a little ammonia to helt dissolve the casein (or soda, but I don't know about the soda method's quantities). For a filler you can use fine plaster, marble powder, talcum (its mineral too), even flour. Potato starch gives an easy to apply paint and was used for paintingand as a glue (cooked) for wallpaper in "old times". You mix one volume chalk (slighty "active" chalk or desacivated which is what I use, be sure to take the best quality, that is the snow- white fine powder, else with the slightly grey type you get a slightly grey paint that is impossible to make white) + 3 volumes filler of your choice + 3 volumes partly-skimmed milk and "some" ammonium to make the mixture smoother. Or another type of recipe is one volume casein powder (from the drugstore) + four volumes water (and I 'd add some ammonia again, it needs to be alkaline, vinegar for instance will not do the job, you can try soda) then add four volumes of chalk that you already have mixed with water to the consistency of a salve. Whatever recipe, you can add pigments if you want something else than plin white (creamy, beige, etc... grey, for grey add charcoal powder) until 10% of the weight of the chalk (or volume) pigments, if you want to have something else than white. Remember chalk is alkaline and inorganic, so the pigments must be mineral like natural earth pigments, else the chalk makes a chemical rection with organic (carbon-based) pigments and the color may end up being far from what you'd expect. Only organic/carbon-based pigment I know that is OK to use is charcoal. All these paints seem light when applied but end up being opaque when dried and the chemical process of drying chalk-paint has hardened the surface. Wait som days for it to cure before applying melted bee's wax for topcoat. The waiting time depends on the temperature/humidity/drafts. There are many recipes out there, but basically the proportions are more or less the same. It's never very precise, because many things impact like degree of humidity, temperature etc... You must cover your nose and hair while mixing the chalk with water, it swirls around in the air (it is irritating for the lungs but you can get it on your skin without danger, I even had some in my eyes, it's better to wear glasses or goggles, I use old sunglasses when I paint outside). But honestly, in the kitchen (and I need to repaint my cabinets) I'd go for the resin-based paint. However chalk-paint on concrete or plaster is truly cheap and super. I painted an ugly concrete wall in my garden, was flooded with until 1 meter high water running through my place during almost a whole day and night (my neighbour says my house looked a boat in the middle of rough sea, lucky me I and the dogs weren't home) and I'm looking at it now, more than 10 years later, it is still white.... Here's a link (a .pdf in French) where you can see wooden panels (will give a fair idea for cabinets) before and after home-made chalk-paint was applied. http://www.apache-asso.fr/ressources/files/fiches-techniques/Fabrication-peinture-chaux-caseine.pdf?PHPSESSID=1b8a505e0b23fb9c53526cf0609c372f This guy does not talk about the ammonia, but I really believe it's an important ingredient to help dissolve the casein. I learned about the ammonia when living in Denmark, it is the husband of a woman decorator responsible for decorating the royal palaces who gave away one of his recipes in a Danish women's magazine. This recipe (homemade white cheese+ chalk+ ammonia) was used by the wife and husband for painting outdoor wooden support, and openings and fence on their 300 years old farmhouse. It looked great! However they did mention, they were repainting each spring :-) !!!!!
Carole
on May 04, 2016
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