How to Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets: Before & After

Of all of the things that we've done to our new house thus far, I think that we may be most proud of our kitchen cabinets. The reason for this is simple: They were a TON of work, but the work was TOTALLY worth it. 

To us, the transformation from reddish-brown to white makes the kitchen feel like a totally different room, and makes all of our old appliances look a little less dingy/outdated (but oh, are they outdated!). 

In total, the project took from late January until early April, so I'd say it was an undertaking. But, when we finally re-installed the cabinet doors a few weeks ago, it felt great. 

So, since some of you have asked, here's how we did it. I should note that this project was a b*tch (no offense to Sayde girl!!), but yes, I would totally do it all over again (in a heartbeat!) if I had another kitchen with ugly wooden cabinets on the other side of the house...I think it was worth it. 

Before I share the step-by-step, here's a reminder of what we started with: 

STEP 1: Remove all cabinet doors with an electric screwdriver. We were lucky here--the hinges on our doors were really easy to remove/reinstall at the end. We carried all of the doors down to the basement. 

STEP 2: Sand ALL surfaces that are going to be painted, including cabinet doors. Ben did this with an electric sander and it was quite a task. There was dust everywhere (every surface was covered in a thick layer of it). Then we used "liquid deglosser" to clean the sanded surfaces of all dust, oil, grease, etc. 

STEP 3: Prime, prime, prime! Prime all visible surfaces. Since our wood was SO dark we did 2 layers of primer on everything. Luckily, the insides of our cabinet weren't the same dark wood, so we choose to leave them as is (phew!). 

STEP 4: More painting! W did 3 layers (THREE!) of white paint on top of the primer. We used Benjamin Moore Advance in Decorators White (Satin finish for easier cleaning). This took forever. 

Once we had all of the cabinet fixtures painted, we were able to move in and start using our cabinets. We did go ahead and finish the doors for the bottom cabinets, so a certain little dog wouldn't be able to get into them with her long nose...

STEP 5: Remove all of the hardware from the cabinet doors and spray paint it with an "Oil-Brushed Bronze" spray paint (sanded it down first to rough it up a bit). 

STEP 5: Prime and paint the cabinet doors. Again, 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint! On both sides! No joke. This took forever because you had to wait for each side to dry completely before you could do another layer. Tip: Do the backs first, so that if they get messed up while you're doing the front/final steps, it doesn't matter as much. 

STEP 6: Reattach hardware (not shown). This was pretty basic because we used our old hardware, so we didn't have to create any new holes in the cabinets. 

**You'll see below that Ben is drilling into one of our drawers, and that's because, as with any home improvement project, you'll run into issues. This one drawer had all sorts of issues when we tried to reattach the front panel, so we had to be resourceful ;) 

STEP 7: Re-hang all cabinet doors using an electric screwdriver. And then have a glass of wine because we're done!

Can you tell I'm not a DIY blogger? If I were, I would know to clean up the counters, put out a bouquet of "freshly-picked" flowers, and remove the un-matching, dingy dish towel from the oven before taking the "After" picture. Oops! I promise I'll get better at staging over time ;) 

So there you go, that's our kitchen for the time being! We're not done, but at least it doesn't make me want to barf anymore, so I'd say that's a step in the right direction ;) 

Now we've GOT to get to painting our bedroom, the guest bedroom, the office, and my studio...!