Upgrading kitchen cabinets without replacing them is an ideal solution for homeowners looking to refresh their space Introduction
if you’ve ever looked at getting your cabinets professionally painted you’ll know that it’s not cheap but if you have a little time and you have a little patience you can do it yourself and save a whole bunch of money and I recently did that with my kitchen I have one drawer face left to go and I want to walk you through the supplies that you’ll need the paint that I used and some different techniques that uh will ultimately let you transform your kitchen just like I did so let’s head to the store and get some supplies and talk about what you’ll [Music] need [Music]
1. Gathering Your Supplies
so before we start doing anything let’s talk about some of the equipment and the materials that you’ll need before starting the process of painting your kitchen cabinets I think the first and most important thing is some paint this one specifically is heirloom Traditions I got the spruce color it says that it’s an all-in-one paint and even the bottom says just clean and paint
I’m sure there’s a bunch of other variations of paint that you can get just look for something that says hey you don’t really need to and or prime your cabinets before doing so and that’s what this said so I got it and it seemed to work out pretty good for me next I have this little cup that I’m just going to use to pour a little bit of paint in so I’m not using the gallon bucket as
I’m painting things and I can kind of hold it in my hand and move around as I go if you don’t have one of these highly recommend picking one up pretty inexpensive tool but it makes stirring up the paint so much easier I’m sure you’ve seen these before but uh definitely recommend picking one up but if you don’t you can easily just use the wooden paint paint stick or stir that they give to you once you buy your paint next grab one of these foam roller handles I think this one’s 4 in and then kind of like a pack or a couple of these foam rolling brushes
uh it’s meant for smooth surfaces and it says smooth finish ideal for doors and cabinets so these are the ones to get and they worked perfectly for me you also need a paintbrush doesn’t really matter too much about the the specifics of it but I was just looking at all of the paint brushes and whatever said good for all paints is the one that
I ultimately went with how big it is it really is going to depend on the cabinets that you’re painting um but yeah that’s all personal preference there and if you’re wondering why this is duct taped on the handle it’s because my dog thought it was a chew toy thanks bud and as the paint mentioned all you need to do is clean and then paint so to clean it I picked up some of this tsp substitute it says clean before painting ready to use just wipe down the surfaces use on wood brick and
metal this is perfect to just get some of that grease off or anything else uh that might be lingering on your cabinets just so we have a a nice adhesive of the paint to the cabinet itself so grab some of this and then additionally grab some of these Scotch bright pads
it’s basically like a sponge but coarse so it will help kind of like remove some of that um those stains that are already on your cabinets or things that uh you just want to get off next grab some frog tape or any sort of painters tape this will help if you’re painting the face frame or if there’s parts of your cabinet that’s up against something
you can just easily set this down you don’t have to worry about cutting in or even like the base trim that I I did that with just to separate from the round over of my flooring and the actual uh like toe kick of the cabinet I used this on the floor so I didn’t have to worry about getting it uh too closely
if you have one grab a mallet for me I had to use this thing because the drawer faces of the the drawers themselves were screwed in but then there were also some brad nails so I just used this Mallet gave it a couple Taps to remove the drawer face from the actual drawer so then I can bring it out here to paint it this is some other blue pain painters tape and I really just use this so
I can mark off all of the drawer faces and the cabinet doors just so I know where did I take them from so I could put them back in the same spot when uh when the painting was all done and then lastly grab a drill or a screwdriver uh just so you can remove some of those drawer faces away from the drawers
remove the cabinet doors from the hinges themselves and uh you can also use this for the paint steerer so it’s got a lot of uses so just have one of these handy okay that should be it so let’s go inside let’s grab the drawer and then bring it back out here and we can start the process
2. Preparing Your Cabinets for Painting
so this cabinet face is a lot different than the cabinet doors and the drawers and the hardware that’s associated with those this has an interesting one just because it flips down and this is the one that’s in front of my sink that holds sponges and whatnot so I had to get crafty I grabb one of these right angle bits for my drill thought I could just get the face out so I could leave the hardware in the actual like Bas frame but I couldn’t so
I had to take everything out basically and then take that whole thing out put it up on my counter and get those last remaining screws with the screwdriver and if you’re doing your cabinets all at once you’re going to have a lot of screws and a lot of cabinet hardware so just make your make sure you stay organized with all those I used this coffee cup and it worked well so once that was done brought the piece of wood out to my workshop so we could paint it so the first step like
I mentioned is that we need to clean everything so find a place in your house whether that’s your kitchen your garage just enough space where you can take all the cabinet doors and all the drawer faces and lay them all out uh if you have scrap wood that would be great too and you can rest all of those things on top
because we do need to let these dry before we start painting and the extra air flow will definitely help so to start grab your tsp substitute grab a plastic cup grab your scotchbrite pads and some paper towels or cloth and uh let’s dig into it so all of my cabinet drawer faces and doors had these little rubber stoppers so I just had to take that off before I could start cleaning so
then I grabbed my tsp substitute and gave it a couple of shakes you don’t need to dilute it or anything so I just poured it directly into a little plastic cup it does say it needs to be plastic so make sure you have a plastic cup for that next grabbed the scotchbrite pad dipped it in and then
just you know I just started uh just just started cleaning the thing there was some stuff on it so I did just grab a chisel just cuz it was close by but really anything you just want to scrape some other stuff off that is lingering cuz you want this thing to be super super clean for the time it comes for when it comes time to painting so yeah just did one side flipped it over and
uh yeah I sat it down you do have to wait 2 to 3 minutes after you apply it before you know wiping it off with a paper towel which you see here so just make sure you read the directions on whatever product that you get and then just follow it along
3. Painting Techniques for a Smooth Finish
so the painting technique that worked really well for me when I was doing my kitchen cabinets is I would grab my brush grab the paint and I would paint over the entire cabinet door or the drawer face when that was done everything was coated with paint from the paintbrush I would grab my roller and then just smooth everything out so that process worked really really well for me and I would highly recommend it for you as [Music] well [Music] so one technique that really worked for me here
I was painting is that I would put a lot of paint on the paintbrush and then just kind of work my way from the middle towards the outside and the reason why I was doing that is because if I had a lot of paint in the middle I could then come back with my roller and then kind of like scoop it up and make sure it’s evenly applied everywhere else so it especially work works for the sides because you don’t want any like runs or drippage you know what I’m saying drippage so the pain can says that
it should be dry within 1 to 2 hours for me personally it was somewhere in between 30 minutes and an hour you basically just want to wait until it’s dry to the touch and then you can add your second coat for all of my cabinets and drawers and the entire kitchen I did two coats
I felt like two coats was just enough for it to look perfect I still have that wood grain kind of popping through so yeah let’s uh let’s wait 30 minutes wait till this dries I’m going to put another coat on top of this wait till that dries flip it over and then do two coats on the other side as [Music] [Music] well
4. Reinstalling Hardware and Final Touches
hey guys while this drives I just want to let you know that I’ve put together a free guide on my recommendation on the top 10 essential tools for beginner Woodworkers it’s a PDF it’s got lots of good information about the different tool types that exist out there my thoughts and recommendations on each one of them and I also include some links for you to check out as
well if you want to see that list go head down to the video description down below click the link enter your email address and I’ll send it to you also feel free to comment on this video and just right tool guide and I will respond to your comment
I’ll send you the link there as well so that’s out there you guys should check it out any feedback questions let me know and now let’s get back to finish painting this so we can put it back in my [Music] kitchen so for all the rest of the cabinet doors and the drawer faces in my kitchen I installed the hardware so the poles and the knobs after after I put them back into the kitchen because it was just easier to do it that way for this one specifically since it sits right in front of my kitchen sink
I’m going to do it out here just so I don’t drill too far and hit that so I’m going to I have a couple tools here I’ve got my tape measure to kind of Mark off the location of where I want to drill for the cabinet knobs I have a 3/16 uh inch drill bit that I’ll be using to drill those holes and then I also have a champer bit as well and I use this one just so the nails on the the other side or the screws on the other side can be recessed a little bit and
it helps to give me a little bit more clearance uh as it’s coming through the other side to attach the knob so you could do all of this manually but if you have a big kitchen and a lot of doors and a lot of drawer faces
I would recommend picking up what I did and this is just a little jig to help with installing all of that cabinet hardware you set this based on where you want the placement for it and then you can easily move this from one cabinet door to the next and all the placement will be locked in and and it will look perfect but because I just have one of these
I’m just going to measure it out with the tape measure and drill it out that [Music] [Music] way so this next clip is going to be a little bit blurry but when you buy the drawer poles or the the knobs they come with two different screws of different lengths one is just your standard screw length but then there’s another one that’s a bit longer but as you can see kind of on the threads of the screws
they have places where you can cut them to kind of adjust the the length of them so that’s ultimately what I needed to do because the the shorter screws were a little bit too long so I had to go back I needed to flip the piece of the drawer face over again and I needed to deepen the chamfer and the hole that I drilled Out On The Backs side and then I grab my pliers and just kind of like cut the other screws a little bit shorter and then once I did that they fit perfect and now it was time to get this cabinet reinstalled back in my [Music] [Music] kitchen
Conclusion
and the last thing to say is because we didn’t get these professionally painted we didn’t do any sanding we didn’t do any priming there is potential to get some Nyx in the paint as you’re installing everything back into your kitchen which wasn’t a big problem for me
I just grabbed my paint cup and just did some final touches and it looks great and I haven’t had a problem since so I hope you guys found this valuable and if you like the video would appreciate if you hit that Thumbs Up Button subscribe if you’re not already head on over to my patreon page and check that out and yeah I’ll see you guys in the next one.