Need motivation to paint cabinets

[jchokie79]

I've wanted to paint out cabinets, oh say for five years now when we moved into our house. We have builder grade oak and I really want to paint them white. However I understand it is a lot of work and I'm just trying to muster up the energy and effort. I'm thinking of using the Rustoleum kite. I've seen lots of great results on here and on a few blogs.

If you've used it, would you recommend it? Or if you have painted your cabinets, what's the #1 advice you would give?

Again, just trying to mentally prepare myself.

This is the kitchen currently, lots of cabinets!

[hunniapple]

We used the Rustoleum kit on a bathroom vanity and plan on eventually doing the kitchen. It came out amazing and I highly recommend it.

The best tip I can give you is that there is no shortcut, but it is well worth the amount of time you will spend on it (which is longer than the Rustoleum people say). Definitely prepare yourself mentally for the time commitment. If you work full time and you will only have weekends to work on it, expect that your kitchen will be in slight disarry for a few weeks at a minimum because of the size of it and the length of time it will take. DH read a lot of reviews in advance for tips and that was extremely helpful. Make sure to allow ample drying time between coats. Don't try to speed up the process by not waiting long enough. The trickiest part was the top coat. You need to be really careful with that part because it leaves NO room for error - watch the video that comes with the kit. It's helpful with this aspect.

Are you planning on the pure white alone or doing the glaze on top (the stuff that makes the wood grain pop and gives it a slightly darker look)? I ask, because I did read some negatives about the pure white kit specifically, that the cabinets yellowed after some time. I don't know if it's actually the case, but thought I would mention it. However, we plan to do pure white with the glaze in our kitchen. Yellowing was ONLY an issue for people who did not use the glaze. We did the espresso for the bathroom vanity and will be using it on another vanity. All the vanities and cabinets in our house are/were a golden oak color.

We got the small kit and barely used any of the paint at all - we have a ton left. I think people had issues with there not being enough of something in the kit - maybe the glaze, but I think Rustoleum provided this to them free of charge if they ran out. We had no issues though.

Good luck!

[Susie]

I will say that painting my kitchen cabinets was one of the most tedious, long lasting PITA projects that I've done, and is also one that I only wish I'd done sooner. I'm really happy with it. But if I'd rushed it and cut corners, a job that soon chipped or wasn't done well to begin with would drive me batty.

I did mine with SW paint products. I don't know if a "kit" is that much easier, but I haven't tried it so I can't comment. I was looking for juuuuuust the right shade for mine so I needed the benefit of a full paint fan deck at my disposal.

The biggest pieces of advice I have are to sand and clean well before priming, use good products, and give them more time than you think they need to dry and cure before you rehang the doors.

Before:


Now:

[mkbt]

We are almost finished painting our kitchen cabinets white, and while it's taken a little over a month, it looks amazing so far. My #1 tip- don't cut corners. We sanded three times (different grits), primed twice, sanded again, painted three coats, and we are in the process of finishing up two coats of poly over the paint. I love how it looks and can't wait to hang everything back up.

[heygrey]

i did the cabinets in our (rented) apartment so there was lots of corner cutting. mostly because the cabinets are in pretty bad shape to begin with so painting was a temporary cosmetic fix. even still, it took forever - 4-5 days of concentrated effort.

my biggest frustration was cooking and eating in the middle of a huge mess. also, i didn't have the energy to cook a decent meal after spending my whole day painting. in the future i would make sure i'm stocked on easy to prepare foods or plan to eat out during the worst of it. if you're doing it over several weekends, try to keep the mess contained as much as possible, just for your sanity.

but in the end - totally worth it. even though i have a hodge podge of cabinets they look better clean and matching in color.

[jchokie79]

Thank you ladies for all of your tips and suggestions. We've started our project! So far so good. Didn't end up getting the kit bc it would have taken 3 large kits to do our kitchen!

We're making good progress and hope to have some progress pics to share tomorrow. In the mean time, here's me bringing sexy back.