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If Painting Kitchen Cabinets Sounds Fun, Make Sure Your Check Out Our Kitchen Cabinet Ideas

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Painting kitchen cabinets to achieve a new look without emptying your pockets may be one of the most recession-wise kitchen cabinet ideas you will have in a long while. After all, you can change the whole look of your kitchen, from its ambience to its aura, with the simple changing of cabinet colors! Here then are the right steps to painting cabinets.

Prepare the Kitchen and the Cabinets

Unless your kitchen cabinets are the removable types, you have to prepare the kitchen to accommodate accidents like paint spills. You want to achieve successful results in painting cabinets, not unsuccessful attempts at painting the surrounding walls. With that said, you must cover the countertops and backsplash with painters' tape, rosin paper and plastic. You should also clean the built-in parts with a sponge and cleaner in places where you plan to paint. This is a necessary step to remove years of dirt and grime that have stuck to the wood, which will then make allow for easier painting kitchen cabinets.

When painting cabinets, you remove the doors, knobs and pulls and other removable parts for separate painting from the built-in components. Again, you must clean these removable components well so as to enable them to receive the paint easily. You must allow them to dry thoroughly. Preparing for painting cabinets also means smoothing the dings and divots. Basically, you fill in the gaps with wood putty and then sand said wood putty and the whole cabinet parts with 100-grit sandpaper. This will smoothen out the putty into the wood while providing a rougher texture to the cabinets' finish.

Priming and Sanding the Cabinets

Painting kitchen cabinets requires applying the primer, which will allow the paint to bind itself to the cabinet surface better. This way, your cabinets are less likely to be damaged from daily bumps from pots and pans as well as provide for a longer-lasting finish.

To start priming, you must lay the doors facedown on a platform. You will start applying the primer first against the grain and then with it, beginning with the interior panel and progressing into the rails and stiles. You will then leave it to dry before painting on the other side. When this is done, you must hand them by their cup hooks to dry. Do this for at least several hours.

The next important steps in painting cabinets will have to be sanding them twice in a row. First, you use a 220-grit sandpaper and random-orbit sander to smoothen out the primer brushstrokes on the flat panels. Second, you sand the trims with a fine-grit sanding sponge. You must progress into the trim detailing so as to achieve a smooth surface in all areas.

Painting cabinets also means that the cabinet boxes and frames must be sanded in the same manner. You want to achieve a uniform look to the whole setup. And then you must vacuum away the excess wood followed by wiping down with a tack cloth. It may be necessary to repeat the priming and sanding process until you have achieved a grain-free base coat.

Painting Kitchen Cabinets

Now, comes the easy part in painting cabinets. You can now start actually painting cabinets using an old-fashioned paintbrush. When painting the color, always go against the grain, start with the interior panels and then progress into the rails and stiles, and apply thin coats to avoid uneven coverage and unsightly drips.

Painting cabinets with a paintbrush is sufficient for the purpose. If you want to achieve a superior finish, you should also use an airless spray painter. It should be an easy task just as long as you overlap the passes by 50 percent, start with the edges and move towards the door faces, and lay the parts flat until dry.

In conclusion, painting cabinets is a relatively easy task when you know how to follow directions. It is just prepare, sand, prime and paint, after all. The trick is in choosing the right colors for your kitchen cabinets to achieve a whole new look to old things. But that is another topic for another time.

Summary:

Painting kitchen cabinets truly changes the look of your kitchen without spending too much money on renovations. As long as you know how to clean, sand, prime and paint wood, you should do just fine.