If you want to give your kitchen a much-needed facelift without calling in a team of design professionals and taking on a budget-busting project, a great place to start is with your kitchen shelves. Your kitchen cabinets are the most important feature of your kitchen décor, and painting your kitchen cabinets can be one of the easiest ways to make your kitchen look like a whole new room. The great thing about painting kitchen cabinets is that if you’re careful, you can do a professional-looking job without consulting a professional.

getting ready to paint

The proper way to start painting cabinets is to remove the doors and, if possible, remove the cabinets from the walls. You’ll need to store cabinet hardware—its hinges, drawer knobs or pulls, and screws—off the side in a safe place; Using a separate bag for each cabinet’s hardware, labeled so you know where it came from, is a foolproof way to keep track of all the separate pieces.

Once you’ve removed the cabinet doors and/or the cabinets themselves, the next step to successfully painting your cabinets is to move them to a well-ventilated area and place them on a drop cloth, drop cloth, or several layers of newspaper.

sand before painting

If your kitchen cabinets have been finished with varnish or polyurethane, you will need to sand them to create a surface for the new paint to adhere to. The same applies if they have been painted with an oil-based paint and you want to repaint them with acrylic paint. Use medium grade sandpaper to start and finish with fine sandpaper. Use a tack cloth between each sanding session to remove the old finish, and never sand without wearing safety glasses and a face mask.

You can start painting your kitchen cabinets when you remove the varnish or old paint, and the amount of paint you need will depend on the type of finish you want. A matte finish will require less paint than a semi-gloss or high-gloss paint. And it’s always better to use an acrylic or latex paint, simply for the ease of cleanup.

A tip for painting cabinets is to follow the direction of the wood grain when applying the paint. Otherwise, your brush strokes will be much more noticeable.

Drying and Reassembly

Let your kitchen cabinet doors dry between coats in a ventilated, dust-free area, and keep them out of the sun if possible, so their color isn’t affected. While they dry, you can return to the kitchen and start working on the cabinet exteriors and frames. Just remember to keep the kitchen doors and windows open.

When the two doors of your kitchen cabinet [http://www.knowcabinets.com/category/why-custom-cabinets-are-becoming-customary] and the exteriors are dry, you can attach the doors to the hinges and add the handles, drawer pulls, and knobs. If you want to finish the job of painting your kitchen cabinets with a completely different look, you can even add new hardware!