Painting Kitchen Cabinets – Day 2
I spent about 6 hours today painting doors and drawer fronts and starting a new section of kitchen cabinets. I know it seems like it’s taking forever for me to do this project, but I am experimenting as I go along to see what works and doesn’t.
Additional Primed Cabinets
Something that works for me when painting the detail in the doors is to start in the corners first.
Starting One Side of the Corner
Still Painting Corner
I mentioned in the Day 1 posting that I’m doing 3 coats of primer. The pictures below illustrate why.
Stain Coming Through 1st Primer Coat
Stain Almost Covered With 2nd Primer Coat
After the 2nd coat of primer dries, the 3rd coat will completely cover the stain and fill the wood pores.
One thing that helps is to have a helper like mine. She does a good job of keeping birds away 
.
Painting Helper
Up through this post,
- the only power tool I’ve used is a cordless drill to remove the cabinet doors
- all sanding has been done by hand
- all painting has been done by either brush or roller
It has been about 13 1/2 hours and so far I’ve done the following.
- 3 coats of primer on 1/3 of the cabinets
- 1 coat of primer on another 1/3 of the cabinets
- 3 coats of primer on 2 doors and 1 drawer front
- 2 coats of primer on 6 drawer fronts
Next weekend I’m changing things up. I’m shifting over to using more power tools
- Use a random orbiting sander for prep
- Use an air compressor to clean drawer and door fronts
- Setup a temporary spray booth area
- Use a latex sprayer to apply primer and paint
Painting Kitchen Cabinets – Day 1.25
Well, I managed to work about 2 1/2 hours yesterday on painting the kitchen. It was raining yesterday morning, In Vegas we’ll take rain any day and love it, so I started to work in the late afternoon.
Just in case it started to rain while I was working, I slapped together a work table under the porch from a wheelbarrow, an old door and some scrap wood to level it.
Wheelbarrow Work Table
I purchased a 2″ and 4″ roller to see if that would help apply the paint faster than using the 6″ roller.
New Paint Rollers
The thing that is taking the longest is doing the doors and drawer fronts so I started on those first.
When sanding and painting the drawer fronts I made sure not to sand off or paint over the number I put on the back of the drawer fronts. I really don’t want to have to figure out which front goes where by the screw holes.
Numbered Drawer Fronts
Primed Numbered Drawer Front
When inspecting the previous day’s work I noticed there was some crazy stain / substance coming through the Kilz 2 primer.
Crazy Stain On Cabinet
There was no way any amount of primer was going to cover that so I scraped and sanded the cabinet in that spot. After that the stain didn’t come back when the primer was reapplied.
Scraped And Sanded Stain
The rolling action on the Whizz 2″ roller was pretty bad. I ended up using it as just a sponge to paint the edges of the cabinet.
Using Non-Working 2″ Roller As Sponge
What worked great was the 4″ roller. I was able to get into some smaller areas that I was using a brush before. In fact I eventually ditched the 2″ roller and used the combination of 4″ roller and small brush.
4″ Roller Works Great
The thing that really paid off was having the larger work area under the patio.
Larger Work Area Is Key
I was able to get a total of 3 coats on the cabinets I started earlier and made more progress on the cabinet doors and drawers in that area of the kitchen.
- The roller / brush combination to use is a 4″ roller and small paint brush
- Make sure to have a larger work surface to paint doors and drawer faces
Painting Kitchen Cabinets – Day 1
I’m going to try something different with this project posting. I’m going to do a day by day recap instead of compiling everything at the end and doing a recap. I’ll try to get it posted by the next day at the latest.
Our kitchen cabinets are really old, 30 years, have some kind of oak stain on them and don’t even have solid door. Never seen raised doors that were two pieces of door skin with some edging holding them together. Anyway I decided to tackle painting the kitchen cabinets.
Being President’s Day weekend I was lucky enough to get Monday off. This gives me one more day to mess something up and fix it by the time I have to start work again on Tuesday.
Original Kitchen
I had tried a couple of methods in the past to paint the cabinets without success.
- Just paint the cabinet with a brush and some kitchen and bath enamel paint
- Use enamel spray paint with a spray primer to paint a drawer front
Just painting with a brush left some really pronounced brush strokes and there was something in the wood that bled through no matter how many coats was put on.
Failed Painting Hanging Cabinet Test
Closeup Of Failed Painting Test
When I did the spray paint method, I really wanted a smooth finish. I tried to fill in the pores of the wood, but just doing that one drawer front took hours. The results were less than optimal. There are little pocks on the front where I didn’t get all the wood pores filled. If I were to do this again I would just cut a new front from MDF.
Failed Spray Painting Front Drawer
The steps I am going to take for painting all the cabinets.
- Mask off around the cabinet. I’m not that good of a painter so if I don’t want to accidentally paint it I have to use painters masking tape.
- Remove the door / drawer front
- Sand the existing finish. I used
- sandpaper between 100 – 150 grit.
- a smaller sanding block made from a scrap piece of wood
- a large sanding block normally used for sanding drywall
- Apply at least 2 coats of primer. Primer is cheaper than regular paint. I used Kilz2 latex because the VOCs are way less than the oil based one.
- Apply 2 coats of enamel based kitchen and bath paint
I started with the failed upper cabinet that I painted earlier. It was already masked off and all I had to do was take the doors off, sand it and put the first coat of primer. Everything went smooth.
Doors From Failed Test Cabinet Off
After that I started on the lower cabinet below that one.
Masking Off Area
Removing Drawer Front
The drawer fronts were attached by screws and staples. I’m just going to use the screws when reattaching the fronts.
Drawer Fronts Removed
Watch Out For Staples
To keep track of the two different door screws and hinges, I put the screws in bowls according to size and kept all the hinges in one area.
Keeping Track Of Door Screws And Hardware
When I started to take the drawer fronts off more drawers I numbered the drawers and corresponding fronts, on the inside of the drawer fronts. I started with 0 because I’m a geek.
Numbering To Keep Track Of Fronts And Drawers
I start sanding and within not even a minute I slice my thumb on one of the staples sticking out of the drawers.
After bandaging my thumb, I pounded those staples down. Needless to say I didn’t make that mistake with the other ones.
Told Me To Watch Out For Staples
My Revenge On The Staples
Sanded Cabinet
Before putting on the primer, I wiped the cabinet clean with a damp cloth. Later I used a shop vac to clean the cabinet before wiping it down. Doing this:
- allowed me to use the cloth for more than one piece
- kept the dust down
To apply the primer I was using a brush for the detailed work and a smooth roller for larger areas.
Small Brush and 6 Inch Roller
I started with the brush to get the cracks and area the roller would have a hard time getting.
Using Small Paint Brush First
First Coat Of Primer On Cabinet
When doing the doors I would do the side facing inside the cabinet first. Again using the brush first on the edges and areas the roller can’t reach.
Using Small Brush On Doors First
A little while back my wife bought me something called Painters Pyramids
So far I’ve worked on this project for 5 hours and maybe have finished about 20% of the project.
Day 1 Lower Cabinet Progress
Day 1 Upper Cabinet Progress
Day 1 Door And Drawer Front Progress
- Prepping the cabinets for the first coat of primer is taking longer than I expected.
- I need a smaller roller. Painting the cabinet faces and smaller areas is a pain with the 6″ roller.
- Painters Pyramids are making it easy to paint both sides of the cabinet doors and fronts.
Replacing the Kitchen Faucet
We were shopping at Lowes this last Saturday, and came across a closeout Delta kitchen faucet, 400-WF, that was %50 off marked down to $35. Our current faucet was leaking through the base, and I knew it would cost more than that to get the necessary replacement gaskets and parts.
Old Moen Faucet
At first I thought this would be a half hour job at most, but as soon as I saw the rusted connection piece I knew I was wrong. Unscrewing the brass nut from the mounting post wasn’t working even with penetrating oil. Wrench moved on to Dremel in the hopes of easily cutting the nut off. Thank goodness I was wearing safety glasses because the disks shattered after 30 seconds.
Cutting the Mounting Nut and Post
Using a hack saw blade to cut through the nut and mounting post, it took a half hour to finish.
Mounting Hardware Removed
Once the old Moen faucet was removed there was a lot of plumber’s putty and gasket to clean up. Unfortunately the new Delta faucet’s base wasn’t as big as the previous one, so I had to clean everything off.
Moen Faucet Removed
Unlike the Moen install, I didn’t use any plumber’s putty with the gasket.
Delta Gasket
Instead of a single mounting point, like the Moen faucet, there are two bolts that use threaded plastic washer like bolts to hold the Delta in place.
Delta Connections
Connecting the spray nozzle was easy, just snapped in place. With the water back on to the faucet, everything tested out great.
Install Done and Tested