Well, I FINALLY bit the bullet and decided to paint my kitchen cabinets. I've been thinking about doing it for a long time but just the thought was way too overwhelming. We have LOTS of cabinets and drawers and I just knew it would be a project too big for me. I have never liked the 80's oak. Lamar had a painter friend look at them and he said it would be a huge job. I just haven't had the nerve. Well, last week, this happened:
I noticed our floor was buckling in front of our refridgerator. Lamar knew there was a leak under the fridge and that it had to be moved to find out what was going on. Well, the cabinets were sitting right on top of the fridge. I mean right on top!! There wasn't even a 1/10 inch to spare (couldn't even fit a piece of paper between the cabinets and fridge...this fridge came with the house..now we know why) so Lamar had to take the cabinets off to move the fridge. Turns out, something spilled and it went under the fridge and caused our flooring to buckle. The man who was suppposed to come out yesterday to fix the floor never showed up (don't ya just love that?) :) so we got new people who are coming tomorrow and hopefully my floor will be put back together soon. :)
SO, having my cabinets already removed was all the motivation I needed to get those cabinets painted! I figured I could do one section at a time starting with the cabinets above the fridge. I actually got excited and then started researching paint color and how to paint cabinets.
Okay, so I knew I had to pick the right paint color. I did not want to go through a ton of work and not like the paint color. That happened once in Rayville. I didn't want to spend the energy buying a sample and then painting the wall to see what it looked like so I just went by the sample and ended up painting my kitchen a horrible mustard and chocolate brown. I immediately painted it a different color. It was a lot of work but I learned my lesson. Don't pick a color based on a 1 inch paint sample!! SO, this time around, I googled white kitchens and cream kitchens. I learned that cream goes best with brown/taupe backsplash and white goes best with black or white. My backsplash is taupy and I LOVE the warmness of cream so my next step was to find the perfect cream. I got a million paint samples from a lot of places and ended up buying a sample of Benjamin Moore Linen White. I painted a tiny square on the cabinet and didn't like it. I thought it looked way too yellow. Then I decided later to paint the whole cabinet just in case it looked different and man, did it ever look different! I LOVED it!! I thought it looked great!! It was the perfect cream. I ended up reading a blog post from a color speicialist in Cananda and finding out that Ivory White is a great cream that matches with everything so I just wanted to make sure that I didn't like that more. Here's the post that has a lot of great information. Read all the comments.... there's a lot but it gives you a lot of helpful paint color information. I went out and bought a sample of Ivory White and while I was there, I saw another color that I really like that's in the Spring/Summer 2011 Pottery Barn collection. It's called Mascarpone. I got a sample of that, too, just in case I loved it as much on my cabinet as I did on the sample. I painted the other 2 cabinets and decided they were too white for what I wanted. The colors in the picture are (from the left): BM Mascarpone, BM Ivory White, and BM Linen White. I asked everyone's opinion and everyone liked the Linen White the best. I think I'm going to have to paint the trim around the window above the sink because I think it clashes a little. So, after I decided my paint color, I had to decide how I wanted to paint. I did a lot of research...probably too much because I had way too much information swimming around in my head and different people say different things. I ended up doing what the people at Benjamin Moore told me to do...well, and I added an extra step (TSP).
I told them at BM that I really didn't want to sand (but have read over and over again that you can't expect your cabinets to last if you don't sand) so the guy there handed me this Paso stuff. He told me I wouldn't have to sand. It really scared me to not sand but after googling Paso and seeing that a lot of painters swear by it, I decided to just go for it. I bought some TSP substitute first though just to be on the safe side. I wanted to have my cabinets good and clean. Let me tell you, that TSP is powerful stuff!! I now have a new awesome cleaner!!! It gets everything off immediately!! I ended up cleaning my doors in a few seconds.....normally it takes me a lot of elbow grease to clean those doors. VERY happy with that product.
So, the first thing I did was clean my cabinets with TSP. Then I used the Paso deglosser but I made a mistake that I didn't realize until today. I bought a Box of Rags at Home Depot (I thought they were lint free towels but they were just strong paper towels) and used the Paso on those to degloss the cabinets. The mistake I made was that the paper towel rags were soaking up the Paso and it wasn't getting on the cabinets very good (I didn't even realize that until today when I did the same proces using a lint free towel.....it worked a million times better). After I did that, I just didn't feel secure that my cabinets were deglossed so I went ahead and sanded. I just wanted to make sure that paint stuck!!! It wasn't hard to sand at all. I just sanded and then wiped off the dust with a wet paper towel. It wasn't a big deal but I'm sure it would have been a bigger deal having to sand my whole kitchen. Then, I painted one coat of oil based primer on. I did a thin layer with a 4 inch foam roller and then got the nooks and crannies with a brush. I had read to do a thin layer for it to stick better.
The can said to let the first layer dry 2 hours before putting another coat on so while I was waiting for that to dry, I decided I needed to try to get the paint off the 3 cabinets I had slopped the paint on. Well, I had no idea how to remove the paint so I just started sanding and using a scraper I got to remove my ugly 80's wallpaper :). Not much paint was coming off but I learned how to distress things. I should have taken a pix of how pretty one of the cabinets was before we got more of the paint off. Mar was so sweet and helped me a lot. Matter of fact, after about an hour, I quit and he kept going!! After trying to sand and scrape with not much luck, we decided to try the good ole TSP and it worked like a charm! That stuff is something else!! We still have a little paint left to get off but we have plenty of time before we get to those cabinets to paint. By the time I get to those, I'll be a pro painter! LOL! :)
After 2 hours passed, I painted a second coat of primer on. This time I did it all with a brush. Here's what they looked like after two coats. The thing I have been surprised by is that the oak grain is not showing through at all. Everything I read said the grain would show through which didn't bother me but the oak is not showing through! :) So, after that Mar and I hit the sack.
I woke up this morning and started working again. This time, I used the lint free rags and couldn't believe how much better the Paso worked. I'm a little worried the cabinets above the fridge will chip but even if they do, it's just 2 cabinets and won't be too hard to do over if I have to (I'm hoping the sanding helped). I'm glad that I learned before I did any more. Anyway, I could feel that the cabinets were a lot flatter after applying Paso. Also, a little of the Paso went a lot further. The paper towels were absorbing all the Paso before. Right away, when I started putting the primer on, I could tell a difference. The Paso made the paint really stick to the cabinets. Here's a pix of the wood after one coat. I waited a little over 2 hours and then got to paint the real color. I am using Cabinet Coat and LOVE the way the paint goes on. It's so pretty. I have to wait 6 hours before I apply the next coat. I plan on doing that tonight and then I'll be finished with my first set of cabinets. :)
Here's a pix of the first coat of Linen White. I have 2 coats of primer underneath.
First coat of Linen White.
I can't wait until my kitchen is all finished. I am going to take down the wallpaper, paint, change the light fixture, etc. It will be a LONG job but I'm excited about it. :)
LOTS more to come over the next....uhhhh....6 months...maybe a year. :)
EDIT: Okay, it's the next day and you CAN see the oak grain through the cabinets, which doesn't bother me. I guess the paint had to dry to be able to see it. Just finished the final coat. YAY! :)
Comments