If your kitchen cabinets are solid but dated and dark, a fresh coat of paint can go a long way toward transforming the space without draining your bank account. You can hire a pro to spray-paint them for a thousand dollars or more, but there's a less costly, and less messy, alternative to consider: Use a brush and paint the cabinets yourself.
Step 1: Prep the Room
Before starting a kitchen paint job, empty the cabinets, clear off the counters, and remove freestanding appliances. Relocate tables and other furniture to another room. Tape rosin paper over the countertops and flooring, and tape plastic sheeting over the backsplash, windows, fixed appliances, and interior doorways (to protect the rest of the house from dust and fumes). Mask off the wall around the cabinets. Finally, set up a worktable for painting doors, drawers, and shelves.
Pro Tip: In kitchens the key to a good paint job is surface prep. "Old cabinets are covered with everything from hand oils to greasy smoke residue to petrified gravy," says Dee. "You've got to get all that off or the paint won't stick."
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 2: Remove Doors, Drawers, and Shelves
Back out the hinge screws from the cabinet frame and remove the doors. Working methodically from left to right, top to bottom, label each one with a numbered piece of tape. Also, number the ends of cabinet shelves and the bottoms of drawers. Set aside the shelf-hanging hardware. At your worktable, remove the pulls and hinges and save what's being reused. On the doors, transfer the number from the tape to the exposed wood under one hinge. Cover it with fresh tape.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 3: Clean All Surfaces
Open the windows for ventilation and put on safety gear. Scrub down all of the face frames, doors, drawer fronts, and shelving with an abrasive pad dipped in liquid deglosser. Hold a rag underneath to catch drips. Before the deglosser evaporates, quickly wipe away the residue with another clean, deglosser-dampened rag.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 4: Fill the Holes
If you're relocating the hardware, fill the old screw holes with a two-part polyester wood or autobody filler. It sets in about 5 minutes, so mix only small batches. (ad a pea-size bit of hardener to a golf-ball-size glob of filler.) The filler shrinks a bit, so overfill the holes slightly. As soon as it sets, remove the excess with a sharp paint scraper. If it hardens completely, sand it smooth.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 5: Sand, Vac, and Tack the Boxes
Sand all surfaces with the grain using 100-grit paper. To make sure no bits of dust mar the finish, vacuum the cabinets inside and out, then rub them down with a tack cloth to catch any debris that the vacuum misses.
Pro tip: When using a tack cloth, unfold each new cloth fully, down to one layer, then crumple it to get the greatest dust collection surface.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 6: Prime the Boxes
Slow-drying, oil-based primers work fine on tight-grained woods like maple or cherry, or on man-made materials. But they just sink into open-grained woods such as oak, ash, mahogany, or hickory. Brushing putty, the pudding-thick, oil-based coating Dee used on these oak cabinets, fills the grain as it primes the wood. A couple of caveats: It should be applied with a good-quality nylon-polyester brush, which you'll have to throw away after each coat. And it doesn't become level as it dries; assiduous sanding is required to flatten it out.
Starting at the top of the cabinet, brush on the primer or brushing putty across the grain, then "tip off"—pass the brush lightly over the wet finish in the direction of the grain. Always tip off in a single stroke from one end to the other. Give it a day to dry. (If using brushing putty, apply a second coat the next day and wait another day for it to dry.) Sand the flat surfaces with a random-orbit sander and 220-grit paper. Sand any profiled surfaces with a medium-grit sanding sponge. When you're done, everything should be glass-smooth.
Pro tip: Follow the underlying structure of the cabinet or door with the brush. Where a rail (horizontal piece) butts into a stile (vertical piece), for instance, paint the rail first, overlapping slightly onto the stile. Then, before the overlap dries, paint the stile. Where a stile butts into a rail, paint the stile first.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 7: Caulk Seams and Fill Dents
Squeeze a thin bead of latex caulk into any open seams. Pull the tip as you go, then smooth the caulk with a damp finger. Fill any small dents, scratches, or dings with vinyl spackle, smoothed flat with a putty knife. Once dry, in about 60 minutes, sand again with 220-grit paper, vacuum, and wipe with tack cloth. Spot-prime the spackle, and any spots where the brushed-on primer is "burned through," with a spray can of fast-drying oil-based primer. Wait an hour, then sand the primer lightly with 280-grit paper. Vacuum all surfaces, and wipe with a tack cloth.
Pro tip: The hole in a caulk tube's tip should be no bigger than the tip of a sharp pencil. Slice 45-degree slivers off the tip with a razor until you see the hole open.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 8: Paint the boxes
Work from top to bottom, applying the paint across the grain, then tipping it off with the grain. For cabinet interiors, apply the paint with a smooth-surface mini roller, which leaves a slight orange-peel texture. Sand all surfaces with 280-grit paper, then vacuum and clean with tack cloth. For the last coat, break out a new brush. When the final coat is dry, replace the shelf hangers.
Pro tip: Brushes pick up dust, so always pour paint into a separate container to prevent contamination of the paint in the can. If any paint is left over, pour it back into the can only through a fine-mesh strainer.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 9: Prep, Prime, and Sand Doors and Drawers
The strategy for prepping and painting doors, drawers, and shelves is the same as on the cabinets, except that all the work is done on a table to reduce the chance of drips, runs, and sags. Paneled doors pose some special challenges.
Follow the same prep sequence as for cabinets—clean with deglosser, fill the holes, sand, vac, and tack—and the same priming sequence: in this case, two coats of brushing putty. Smooth the flat surfaces on the panel and the frame with a random-orbit sander. On bevels or profiles, apply elbow grease and a medium-grit sanding sponge. Spackle and sand any dents.
Pro tip: When priming or painting paneled doors, brush in the following sequence to get the best-looking surface in the least amount of time: start with the area around the panel, then do the main field of the panel, then finish with the stiles and rails around the edges. As you go, wipe up any paint that ends up on adjacent dry surfaces. This eliminates the chance of lap marks.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 10: Spot-Prime
After vacuuming and tacking all the surfaces, spray a fast-dry primer on any spots with spackle or bare wood where the sandpaper "burned through" the primer. Wait an hour before sanding.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 11: Apply the Finish Coats
Remove all dust—first with a vacuum, then with a tack cloth—and apply the finish coat. Tip it off with the grain. When the first coat dries, power-sand the flats; hand-sand the profiles. Vacuum and tack every piece, then brush on the final coat.
Pro tip: To prevent drips on outside edges, pull the brush toward them. To prevent drips in corners, first unload the brush by scraping off the paint, then paint by pulling the brush away from the corner. If a drip laps onto a dry surface, wipe it up immediately.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 12: Hang Cabinets to Dry Between Coats
Painting cabinet doors is a trade-off between perfection and speed. John Dee, a perfectionist, prefers to do one side at a time, keeping the faces flat so they don't get runs. But that's 48 hours of drying time per door—one day per side. Here's his method for painting both sides in a day.
Twist two screw hooks into holes drilled in an inconspicuous door edge (the lower edge for bottom cabinets, the upper edge for top cabinets). Paint the door's outside face as above. Let it dry for an hour while resting flat, then tilt the door up onto its hooks and put a drywall screw into an existing hardware hole. Hold the tilted door up by the screw and paint the door's back side.
When you're done painting, pick up the door by the screw and one hook and hang both hooks on a sturdy wire clothes hanger. Suspend from a shower curtain rod or clothes rod until the door is dry.
Photo by Brian Wilder
Step 13: Put Back Doors, Drawers, and Hardware
Wait for the final coat to dry, then put back the shelves. Remove the tape over each door's number, install the hinges and knob, then hang it in the opening it came from. Replace the drawer pulls (or better yet, add new ones) and reinstall each drawer in its original opening.
Photo by Brian Wilder