Painting Kitchen Cabinets

One of the bigger projects I have done in our house is painting our kitchen cabinets. I've painted cabinets before but never this many and never this much of a color change. This was also my first time working with the Advance line by Benjamin Moore. The paint is specific for cabinets and furniture. It really is the closest I have seen to a factory finish when it comes to paint. The only downside is that it has a 16 hour re-coat time. Thats right 16 hours. You also can't rehang your cabinets fronts for 72 hours. I had to put up a baby gate around the entire kitchen for 2 weeks. The end result is definitely worth it though. 

Here is a look back on the kitchen when we did our first walk through.  

After we painted the kitchen/dining area and started ripping off the linoleum backsplash. 

After ripping out the non-working oven hood and replacing it with an in wall exhaust (temporarily), taking off the linoleum backsplash (and painting), hanging our pots and knives, and loads of paint....here are the progress shots!

The steps for painting the cabinets:

1. Clean inside and out. 

2. Remove all doors and drawers. (label hardware)

3. Tape (if you have shaky hands like me)

4. Liquid deglosser (I chose this instead of sanding)

5. Primer x2 (I used a 4 inch foam roller)

6. Benjamin Moore Simply White Advance x2

7. Lightly sanded in between coats with a fine sanding block. 

8. Wait 3 days and rehang cabinet fronts.

9. Sleep cause you're done. 

Need to move the knives down and sand and paint over the repaired spots. Sometimes projects stay half finished for far too long. 

It was hard work but totally doable. Such an easy and inexpensive upgrade. 

Next up, hardware. We actually bought some hardware 3 months ago and finally marked up the cabinets to install. I'll post about that after we do it. I'm super nervous about that one. 

After the hardware we are planning on the floors. We have been itching to replace the floors since the day we moved in. It is old, ugly, dated, and falling apart. There are spots where it is coming up and ripping. Its really bad. We picked out what we are going to put down and it's all I can think about. 

This is one of the spaces that I would love to start from scratch. One of these days we will. I want to tear it out, rework the floorplan, and most importantly add a dishwasher. Until then I'll keep on improving one paint project at a time.