How To Paint Kitchen Cabinets

Renovating a kitchen is one of the most expensive home improvement tasks, as you’ve already observed from the high cost of new appliances, worktops, and cabinetry. When it comes to updating a kitchen’s style, it’s easy to be creative with the cabinets that take up much of the visual area. The task, though, goes beyond just purchasing a gallon of your desired hue.

How To Paint Kitchen Cabinets?

1. Prepare the room

Preparation is the key to a good paint job, and the first few stages are all about getting the space and the cabinets ready for painting before you begin.

• Remove any freestanding appliances and begin by cleaning the countertops and emptying the cabinets.
• Furniture such as tables and chairs should be moved to another area.
• Rosin paper and plastic sheeting should be taped to counters and floors, and fixed appliances and interior entrances should be taped to keep dust and odors from spreading.
• Cover the cabinets with painters’ tape to prevent them from seeing.
• This improvised jig makes it possible to dry a cabinet door from all sides, saving time. Setting it up is as simple as the following:
• Use two ladders to span a pair of 2x4s at eye level.
• Make sure that the holes left behind by the screws are not visible by attaching comparable hooks to the top and bottom borders of upper cabinet doors and drawers.

2. Remove the doors, drawers, and shelves from the cabinets.

• Mark the front and back of each drawer door with a marker to prevent the doors from being mixed up. This mark should be placed behind the hinge.
• Using a screwdriver, remove the door hinges from the cabinet frame.
• Use numbered pieces of tape to identify each one from left to right, top to bottom, as you go. Also, don’t forget to label the undersides of drawers and the edges of cabinet shelves with numbers.
• The shelf-hanging hardware should be put away.
• At your workstation, remove the pulls and hinges and keep the ones that can be used again.
• Reapply new tape to the area.

3. Wipe off every surface.

• If standard cleaners aren’t working, think about using trisodium phosphate (TSP), which is found at hardware and paint stores, if traditional cleaners aren’t working.
• Make careful you follow the container’s safety instructions.
• Rinse and dry all cabinet parts once they have been adequately cleaned.

4.  Assemble the boxes

• Open the windows and put on your safety gear for better ventilation. Scrub all of the surfaces with a liquid deglosser and an abrasive pad.
• Keep a towel under the surface to collect any drippings. Wipe away the remaining deglosser with another clean, deglosser-soaked rag as fast as possible.
• Using a two-part polyester wood or autobody filler, fill in the old screw holes if you’re moving the hardware.
• For best results, combine only a few tiny quantities at a time. Overfill the holes a tad since the filler will shrink a little.
•  Sand it if it’s entirely hardened.
• Scuff the cabinet, drawers, and doors using a foam sanding block. Don’t sand down to the bare wood for this sanding, which is only designed to give the primer something to stick to. Before continuing, wipe away any remaining sanding dust with a tack cloth.
• To remove any remaining dust, thoroughly vacuum the cabinets inside and out, and then wipe them down with a tack cloth.

5. Prepare the cabinet boxes by priming them thoroughly

• The primer is now complete. Make use of a stain-blocking primer, which is fast-drying and protects the cabinetry against bleed-through of the topcoat in the event of heavy staining. Stain-blockers aren’t essential in most cases, and an oil-based or 100% acrylic latex primer will suffice.
• Load the roller and brush with primer after pouring it into the paint tray. Using a roller for large flat surfaces and a brush for small confined areas, apply a layer of primer to the fronts of cabinet doors and drawers.
• The brush should be used to follow the cabinet or door’s underlying structure. To paint the stile and rail where they meet, paint the rail first and dry somewhat before painting the stile.
• Wash your brushes and roller sleeves while the primer dries, and then refill the priming can before cleaning the paint tray.

6. Fill, sand, and caulk.

• Use 220-grit paper to sand the flat areas once the primer has dried. The wood should feel as if it is polished to a mirror finish.
• Fill in any exposed seams with a thin bead of latex caulk.
• Smooth the caulk with a damp finger as you go. If you see any slight imperfections in the surface, use a putty knife to apply vinyl spackle.
• After the spackle has dry for about an hour, sand again with 220-grit paper, vacuum, and clean with a tack cloth. Spray the sandpaper’s locations “burned through” the primer with a fast-drying oil-based primer.
• The primer should be sanded using 280-grit sandpaper after an hour of drying.
• Use a tack cloth to clean all of the surfaces.

7. Cabinet boxes should be painted.

You’re finally ready to start painting! Two applications should be sufficient if the new hue is close to the old. It’s possible to get away with one. There may be three coats of paint required to paint over a dark finish with a lighter hue.

Cut the edges using a paintbrush, then press the color into the corners. Wherever feasible, use an enamel paint roller to apply the paint to a broad, flat area.

• While you’re waiting for the first coat to dry, place plastic bags over the brush and roller to keep them from hardening.
• Sand the surfaces lightly between layers, caring to wipe up the dust.
• Refinish the cabinet doors, drawers, and shelves by cleaning and sanding them.
• Paneled doors should be painted from the outside in.
• As the last step, finish by completing the panel’s stiles and rails.
• Lap marks can be avoided by wiping up any paint that dries on nearby dry surfaces as you move along.

8.  Put back all the pieces

• Your cabinets now have a fresh new design, and you didn’t have to spend much time or money doing it.
• Assemble your doors and hang them in their original locations after removing their numbering tape.
• Each drawer must be reinstalled once the drawer pulls have been replaced or added.