Re-painting the kitchen cabinets

The base cabinets in our kitchen looked horrible. It wasn’t the cabinets themselves, it was the finish. As with much of the house, their paint job was pretty terrible. It was streaky and bumpy, which made lots of grooves for oils and dirt to collect, and they were badly stained all around the handles. Which meant it always looked dirty, no matter how much I scrubbed.

Before re-painting:

I wanted something darker anyway. The color they were painted was very similar to the wall color and it made the room look pretty flat and dull.

So I painted them Martha Stewart’s Zinc (which you can’t get color cards for anymore) 🙁 but it’s a nice rich slate gray, in a semi-gloss finish.

Once again, I texted Dad, and asked the best way to paint over a badly painted cabinets in a semi-gloss finish. I was quite surprised when he said to wet sand them. But the results were amazing. It smoothed all the bumps right out and left a nice, flat finish.

Of course, I removed all the hardware and took all the doors and drawers outside. To sand, I took a sanding sponge, dunked it in water, squeezed out the excess, and lightly sanded everything. The sanding block had to be rinsed out several times during the process. (Very important note if you are going to try this: make sure that you put a drop cloth down, because the wet sanding re-activates the paint, and it will drip.)

There was a film left on the doors after sanding, but since mine were completely sealed with at least 4 coats of paint, I just rinsed them off with the hose and dried them with old towels. The cabinets themselves took a little more work since I couldn’t just hose them down. I didn’t get the sanding block quite as wet and then once they were sanded, I wiped them down twice with damp cloths.

To repaint, I brushed in all of the corners and then rolled on the rest with a 4-inch foam paint roller (similar to this). Love the easy changes that make such a big difference! There were a couple more changes I made, but forgot to photograph them. I’ll tell you about then next week!

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