What not to do before painting your kitchen cabinets!

 

OK, so you have decided to take the plunge and paint your kitchen cabinets and you have turned to the web for inspiration. See my previous article Do you want to transform your kitchen, but you don’t know where to start - paint your kitchen cabinets!  The painted cabinets that you are looking at look simple enough to do, just a few coats of paint and that’s it! A word of warning though, it’s not quite so simple! If you want to avoid a disaster and wasting the money that you will spend on paint and supplies I have listed a few of the things that you should avoid doing.

If you follow these steps then you will be thrilled with the result and have a brand new kitchen for a fraction of the cost that you would have spent buying new kitchen cabinets.

•     You don't clean the surfaces properly before painting

Even if you think your kitchen cabinets are perfectly clean you should take the time to clean them well with a degreaser. Water-based paints' worst enemy is grease spots, the paint will not stick.

• You don't remove the doorknobs

I do recommend that you take all the doors off and remove the drawers and paint them separately but you need to be very careful when reattaching the doors as the hinges may become unaligned meaning that the doors will not open and close properly and you will need to pay a cabinet maker to come and realign them for you! If you do paint the doors while still attached, then try to avoid painting the hinges as they will end up chipping and cracking after a while.

You should remove all the doorknobs, don’t try painting the doors with them still attached to save time, the knobs will be an obstacle when you are trying to achieve a smooth, even surface when painting.

• You don’t label the doors and cabinets

If you do decide to remove the doors and drawers then don’t forget to label each one and the cabinet it was removed from with a piece of masking tape with corresponding numbers on, otherwise, when it comes to rehanging the door you will pull your hair out looking for the correct cabinet that it was removed from!

• You don’t sand

You should lightly sand the cabinets first with 150 or 200 grit sandpaper as this will help the paint to stick to the wood. Even if your cabinets are MDF, or laminate you can still rough the surface up a little. Just give all of the surfaces a quick sanding, you are not trying to get down to the bare wood all you need to do is to dull the glossy surface.

• You don’t make sure that your cabinets don’t have any dust or rubbish before painting

Make sure you remove any dust from sanding and any other bits of rubbish before you start painting. If dust and rubbish remain on your painted surface it will look gritty and you will need to sand again and repaint the surface.

• You don't use primer

Although a lot of the paints on the market advertise the fact that you can use them without sanding or priming and it is tempting to skip this step but I do recommend applying a primer anyway. Sometimes, certain woods may bleed through the paint and this is a disaster. If you are worried that your kitchen cabinets may have this problem you can invest in a stain-blocking primer. Also, surfaces that are nonporous such as MDF, laminate, etc should be primed before painting which will enable the paint to stick properly.

• You don't raise the doors before painting

If you have removed the doors and you don't raise them before painting, you wont be able to paint the edges and corners of the doors properly and you cannot remove any drips. Lay the doors on some empty tins so you can easily move a brush all around the edges.

• Don’t expect to achieve a perfectly smooth finish

If the cabinets are wooden and have a visible grain then the grain is going to show through the paint. If the cabinets are MDF or laminate and you use a paintbrush then you may have brush marks that will spoil the smooth surface, to avoid this you should use a roller.

• You try to complete the job in a day

Painting your kitchen cabinets is not something that can be done in a day or over a weekend! You need to account for at least 4 days to complete the job.

In my next article I will talk about the different types of paint available and how to paint your kitchen cabinets. 

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