How I Painted My Cabinets White (Alternate Title: NEVER AGAIN)

If you know what you want to believe, you can find someone on the internet to tell it to you.

For instance, if you want to believe that painting your cabinets is a cheap and easy way to transform your kitchen over a weekend, you can find supporting evidence on plenty of blogs.

And if you are like me, once you get about halfway through step 1 of this project (which, incidentally, is past the point of no return), you will regret ever starting. But I'm done, and I'm quite happy with the result! But I'll never do it again.

After over two and a half years of staring at my dated laminate cabinets, which I assume are original from the year the house was built (1984), I spent a couple weeks doing research on how to properly paint them. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I ran into doubts when I talked to the paint department guys at two different hardware stores, both of whom told me to forget it and just start saving for new cabinets.

Undeterred, I moved onto a paint store as one blogger had recommended, and he had no qualms about telling me how to go about it and setting me up with the materials. (Paint store guy wants to sell me paint supplies - shocker!) I had the week off and it was only Tuesday, and he said I'd be rehanging by Saturday. Sweet!

Cabinets Before

The supplies were as follows:

• Trim brush (1.5")
• Mini paint roller
• 1 gallon primer (I went with Benjamin Moore 100% Acrylic All-Purpose Primer in White N023 00, but you'll want to ask your friendly neighborhood paint store guy what's best for your cabinets)
• 1 gallon paint (I went with a Benjamin Moore semigloss in White 314 01, also on the advice of the paint store guy)
• 2 sandpaper blocks (more on this later)
• TSP (trisodium phosphate)

Other required supplies I already had on-hand:

• Bucket
• Scrub brush
• Disposable sponges
• Drop cloths and plastic sheeting

Step 1:

That afternoon (4ish on Tuesday), the husband and I got to work moving all of the contents of the cabinets to the next room to get them out of the way of sanding dust and paint. We then removed all doors, carefully numbering each one according to a map I drew of the cabinets' placement in the kitchen so we knew where to rehang them.* We then removed all hardware and placed it in a bag, even though I planned to replace it. (You'll see why this turned out to be a good move.)

Step 2:

We then moved on to sanding, but called it a night when my two sanding blocks got me through about four doors front and back. The sanding blocks were also a bit too fine; I think they were on the order of 220 grit, and I needed about a shade coarser. So the next morning I bit the bullet and bought an electric detail sander, and I'm quite sure it saved me from being institutionalized halfway through this project. Couldn't have finished without it. Of course, there was still plenty of manual work around all the country-tastic detailing on the doors, but yeah...detail sander.

Step 3:

Once the sanding was complete Wednesday afternoon, I mixed up the TSP solution, which is recommended for cleaning off all of the built-up grime that accumulates on kitchen cabinets over the course of, oh, 28 years. Every surface I planned to paint got a good scrub and a rinse down with clean water. Special attention was paid to the areas around and above the stove, as well as the spots nearest each cabinet's knobs and handles, where oils tend to build up from years of handling. Everything was left to dry overnight.

Ready for Primer
(Don't judge the green berber carpet - it is SO next to go.)

Step 4:

Thursday morning, it was time to prime. I taped everything off and got to work on the doors and drawers first, then moved on to the frame while one side of the doors dried. When the frame was finished, I flipped the doors and started priming the other side, finishing about half the doors Thursday night and the other half Friday morning.

Makin' Progress

Step 5:

The painting. Oh, the painting.

Friday afternoon, I started with a coat on the backside of the doors, then I moved on to the frame. I let everything dry overnight. Saturday morning, rinse and repeat.

On Sunday, I flipped the doors and got to work on the fronts. I elected to go with a second coat of primer after seeing how the finish paint went onto some of the detailing, and I'm glad I did.

The single coat of finish paint that went on the fronts was completed over the next few days, in between distractions from the outside world, like eating, washing dishes, doing laundry, going to work, watching the Colts lose, etc.

Step 6 (optional):

After trying to decide between flat black hardware and brushed nickel, I stumbled upon a few case studies that showed surprisingly good results from spray-painting and re-using the existing hardware. I decided to go this route, at least for the short term, as $8 worth of primer and spray paint seemed like a no-brainer over $150 worth of new hardware. I washed the hardware thoroughly, allowed it to dry overnight, then gave everything one coat each of spray primer and flat black spray paint.

Hardware Before & After

Step 7:

The rehanging was easily my favorite part of this process, not least of all because it meant I was DONE, but also because the transformation was much more evident after the still-dated particle-board insides were hidden by crisp white cabinets.

Some before-and-afters:

With a tiny square kitchen, it’s a bit hard to get the full effect from the photos, but suffice it to say the kitchen looks at least 15 years newer (i.e., only 10+ years out of date instead of 25+) and notably brighter and cleaner. The white gives the pale green walls a slightly cooler cast, which I’m OK with. The cabinets also no longer compete with the parquet flooring, which may have just bought itself a stay of execution as a result. The black hardware updates the look without competing with the inevitable country feel of the cabinets. Overall, I’m happy with the result.

And I’ll so never do it again.** I think.

Some notes:

As far as the duration of this project, I did have a few hours worth of help from the husband, but I also took a decent number of breaks, heading off to the hardware store to place the order for our next project and researching some more in between steps. The last cabinet went up on Sunday afternoon, a full 12 days after I began.

That said, it would have taken longer if I hadn’t made peace with the fact that I was cutting a few corners. Where I slacked:

• Inside the cabinets. I was dreading painting the insides, until I found a few bloggers and commenters who actually recommended against doing so, saying they have paint flaking off on every pot, pan, and dish from the insides of their cabinets after painting. That was enough for me - the insides were out.
• The undersides. Anything that couldn't be seen by anyone over 5' tall got primer and a coat of paint, but not a second coat.
• Next to and above the fridge. Here I also stopped at one coat of primer and one coat of paint due to the fact that the only person who will ever see this full-on is the next person who moves my fridge.

Where I didn't slack: Being sure to follow every step. It was made quite clear by everything I read that skipping any of the steps would result in peeling paint. Most blogs I read said to wash first, then sand, then wipe down again, but the paint store guy said to sand first then wash, so I went with that. Otherwise, I was pretty meticulous.

Rookie Mistake: One thing I didn't fully consider before starting was my workspace. I kept everything in the house because I feared the garage would be too dusty, but with two dogs and a cat, I was constantly pulling stray animal hairs off the wet paint (and sanding it out of dry paint). The dogs were blocked out by a baby gate, but the cat, being impervious to barriers, left more than a few paw prints in drying paint. I also should have invested in a pair of sawhorses, but decided to be cheap instead and ended up doing hours worth of yogic contortions to hover over the doors and paint them while they laid on the floor.

Another tip: Before starting, get up close and personal with your cabinets. Do a scan of the room and think about how you're going to attack all the nooks and crannies, the insides of lazy Susans, the part you can only get by opening the dishwasher, all that noise. Being overprepared will eliminate – or at least help you prepare for – frustrating road bumps later.

Another View

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* This is recommended just about everywhere I've read, but once I got to painting I quickly determined it was a PITA and abandoned it, and ultimately had no trouble rehanging the cabinets. I have a tiny kitchen, so YMMV.

** I distracted myself at one point during the process by Googling the combination paint + cabinets + "never do it again", which returned more than a couple results.