How To Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets Yourself For A Total Transformation

Posted on December 18, 2018

Before

Have you ever wanted to teleport back to the 1950’s? If so, all you had to do was come on over and walk into our kitchen.

The knotty pine cabinets. The Formica countertops with aluminum trim. The grease from 60 years’ worth of pot roasts. It was truly the whole experience.

In fact, it reminded me so much of the kitchens in my grandparents’ old houses that part of me didn’t want to change a thing about it for nostalgia’s sake. The fixer-upper itch eventually won out, though, and I decided to give our kitchen a little facelift.

If money were no object, we’d completely gut and renovate the kitchen like we did with our bathroom. The problem is, re-doing a kitchen is a lot more expensive than our small bathroom project was, and our budget for home improvements right now is pretty much nil.

I also didn’t want to put a ton of work into it, like removing the cabinets from the wall or even sanding them down. If there’s the possibility that we’re going to completely tear them out in a few years, why go to all that trouble? Answer: don’t.

So on a recent weekend, my husband was out of town and I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket. I did what any DIY-loving girl would do and made a trip to Home Depot. All in all, the materials for this project cost less than $100. Score! I’ll include a full list of the materials at the end of this post.

How To Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets Yourself

Let’s get to it.

The first thing I did was remove all of the handles give the cabinets and drawer faces a deep cleaning. I used TSP substitute, a heavy-duty cleaner I read about online. I mixed the concentrated cleaner with the directed amount of water and got to scrubbing with the rough side of a sponge (and gloves—this stuff is a pretty heavy chemical).

The first thing I did was use this cleaner while wearing gloves

Look at the grime built up around where the handles were!

It was grimy. The grease and dirt began to slowly come off in a film on the sponge. I thought this step was gross, but then I got to the next step: the liquid sandpaper.

I had already decided not to bother with actual sanding, but I read online about liquid sandpaper, which is a chemical solution that basically strips the surface down in the same way sandpaper would to prepare it for painting.

You guys, if you’re OCD and you do this, be prepared to spend hours scrubbing. It’s necessary, but it’s filthy. It took me about two hours to fully scrub all of our cabinets and drawers, and our kitchen is pretty small.

I first started with the liquid sandpaper and a rag while the cabinet doors were still attached, but I quickly realized I needed more leverage to properly scrape the grease and grime that was still coming off, especially on the cabinets above the stove (I told you—nasty). At this point I stopped and removed the cabinet doors and drawers.

I switched out the rag for the rough-sided sponge (you’ll need several because they get all gunked up) and got back to scrubbing. This was one of the only times I’ve felt thankful we don’t have more cabinets!

I’m not sure it’s totally necessary to use both TSP substitute and liquid sandpaper, but I’m glad I did because once I was done I was confident I was starting with the cleanest surface possible without sanding.

Just over here huffing some fumes

Once the liquid sandpaper was finally done, I started priming. I realized at this point I would need to work in two phases, since I didn’t have enough space to lay out all the cabinet doors for painting at once.

Glamour shot. HGTV where you at?

One coat of primer done, one to go

I primed the first set of doors using two coats of Zinsser Smart Prime and called it a night.

It was supposed to rain all weekend, but the next morning I woke up to sunshine. I decided I needed to capitalize on the good weather as my chance to start spray painting the cabinet hardware. I’m willing to try a lot of crazy things, but spray painting indoors isn’t one of them.

I would have loved to swap out the hardware for something more modern (and still may, eventually), but remember, we’re on a budget here. Instead, my solution was this $6 can of satin nickel spray paint.

After seeing the grime that came off the cabinets the night before, I thought it was probably a good idea to pre-clean the hardware before painting it, too. I mixed up the TSP solution in a plastic cup and used an old toothbrush to scrub down the hinges, handles, and 100 itty bitty screws. Yep, gross again, but at least having them nice and clean made me feel better about not buying all-new hardware.

Once the hardware was clean and dry, I laid it all out in the backyard and sprayed the first coat on.

Push screws through a sheet of tin foil to keep them in place while you spray them!

I’m all about working with what you have, and what I had here was a trash bag, some bricks and a torn up cardboard box

With the first coat of spray paint on the hardware done, it was time for the big moment: applying the actual paint to the cabinets. Eeek!

The paint I picked was Behr’s Alkyd Satin Enamel, which is made specifically for cabinets, in the color ‘Pencil Point.’ It’s about $40 a gallon, but the paint guy at Home Depot assured me it was a much better option than the cheaper alternatives and so far, I believe him.

Since my cabinets were ancient and had a lot of imperfections (scratches, dings in the wood, etc.), I used a satin finish so it would be more forgiving. If you’re painting newer cabinets that are smoother to begin with, I think a semi-gloss would look great.

This color isn’t what I expected; on the swatch it looked straight charcoal, and I even compared several to make sure I got the one that looked the least blue. In person, though, this came out a deep, smoky blue-grey. Although it wasn’t what I expected, as soon as I saw it on the cabinets, I loved it!

I used a paint roller to apply the paint to the cabinet doors and drawer faces. On the cabinets themselves I used a paintbrush and went over the top with a roller to get rid of the brush marks, which worked great. I did two coats of paint with about three hours of dry time in between each. I’m pleasantly surprised with how smooth and even the paint went on, especially since I did the minimum amount of prep work.

Remember how I mentioned doing the doors in two phases? Well, when the first set of doors was dry to the touch, I was a little over-excited to see what the finished product would look like and started to hang them back up immediately.

I thought they looked awesome! But I realized pretty quickly I should have let them dry longer, because they instantly started sticking when the door or drawer would close, which pulled off little flecks of paint (you can see one of those spots where the cabinets meet in the image above). Damnit.

For the second set of doors, I let them dry for two full days before re-hanging them and they were much less sticky. I highly recommend waiting at least 48 hours before re-hanging your cabinet doors.

In addition to the cabinets, I also covered the countertops with faux marble contact paper. That was a project on its own, which I wrote about here.

I still need to add window coverings, some greenery and a few other touches to complete the space, but it’s getting there. (If you’ve been following some of my other projects and are wondering why I didn’t update the kitchen floors along with the floors in the rest of the house, it’s because the subfloor in here needs repairs that a contractor will probably have to tackle before we do anything cosmetic.)

All in all, this project took me a weekend plus extra dry time on the second set of cabinets. Even if you have a larger kitchen, I think you could absolutely make it through this project in a weekend with two people working on it.

It’s been about two weeks since I finished the cabinets, and my husband and I are both loving the transformation! Our kitchen feels so much lighter and more modern. It’s amazing what a coat of paint and a few small tweaks can do. Would you ever paint your kitchen cabinets yourself?