Painting kitchen cabinets

So, for reasons only known to them, the previous owners of our house decided to paint the kitchen cabinets "robins egg blue." I lasted maybe two days in the house and I couldn't take it- I HAD to redo it. I had never actually painted cabinets before but I figured- how hard could it be.

In reality it wasn't that hard- it was just very time consuming. It took roughly three day with the amount of coats I applied 

The "Before" shudder

Our ultimate plan is to redo our kitchen and buy new cabinets, but probably in a year or two. In reality the cabinets are old and not good quality. You can see that some of the wood is water damaged in the bottoms of some of the cabinets. I just couldn't stand the blue for 2-3 years so I had to do something. 

So I've seen a lot of debate on the internet about whether you should sand your cabinets before painting them. It was a pain in the butt but I'm glad I did it. Now keep in mind you don't have to sand them all the way down to bare wood. I just scuffed them up enough with 80 grit sand paper so that the new paint would have a rough surface and have better coverage. 

This is my cabinet doors post sanding- you can see they are primarily still blue but they are scuffed up which helps the new coat of paint adhere to the cabinet. 

We removed all the cabinet doors and sanded them. This would also be the ideal time if you want to change the hinges but ours were weird and hard to find so we just gave them a good soak in CLR. 

So the counter in the kitchen is white/ivory, the backsplash is white subway tile. I like the look of white cabinets but I thought if I painted them all white it would just be too much white. Also, I learned from my last house that had white cabinets that bottom white cabinets are hard to keep clean. So for these reasons I decided to do two toned cabinets instead. I picked out "Gauntlet Gray" from Sherwin Williams color schemes. I purposely got higher quality paint than I normally do because I knew that this would get alot of everyday wear and tear. To be honest I'm not real happy with myself for going with a cheaper white paint for the top cabinets. I used rustoleums basic white paint-which is great for a lot of things and I used it frequently, but I think it struggled with this. I put on three coats of white and you can still see blue coming through when you look closely at the cabinets. I purposely let them dry over night or at least 8 hours. At the time that I did this project it was very hot and muggy which I knew slowed my dry time. 

This is after one coat of white paint. You can still see the blue underneath. 

 

Two coats of white paint. 

Three coats (plus one coat of gray paint) 

In between each coat I sanded the cabinets and doors with 220 grit sand paper to get rid of any drips and to give the next coat the best chance at a smooth application. 

I was very impressed with the high quality gray paint from Sherwin Williams. I did only two coats because it covered so well and I almost ran out of paint. I also liked how it complimented the grout in the subway tile. 

Was it a HUGE time commitment? Yes it was. But it was worth it in my opinion. I couldn't stand the blue. It was a pretty easy job though. I watched movies and talked on the phone to friends and family while I was painting. Also we purposely did not unpack our kitchen until this part was done. 

The finished product (minus the new knobs)

So far after a few months the gray paint has held up well. The white paint has yellowed a bit in some parts- but I'm just going to leave it be until we get new cabinets. 

Best advice for painting cabinets: Spend the extra money on good quality paint.