How to: Painting Kitchen Cabinets - a low cost DIY project

The Before:

When we bought the house, we knew we loved the space in the kitchen and it was in pretty good condition, but knew we had to do something about the color. The color of the cabinets mixed with the color of the walls was horrible.


The first thing we did was paint the walls a minty green color. This was my inspiration for the entire kitchen.


We then painted all the trim white. I loved the way it turned out.


As for the cabinets; at first we were going to paint them white, (I have always wanted white cabinets) but because the countertops were also white, I bought countertop paint to darken them.  After reading tons of horrible reviews on the countertop paint I bought (Rust-Oleum) I panicked and returned it. The countertops are actually in really good condition and I didn't want to ruin them right off the bat. Because I didn't want white on white, I changed the color of the cabinets to grey. It turned out that this was perfect because the blinds on the windows were almost the exact same shade of grey.



Tools we used:
Foam Rollers
Kilz 2 Primer
Paint color of choice (we used grey)
Minwax Polycrylic Protective Finish

I don't like things super shiny so I picked a satin finish in all of the paint products I bought.

You can either spend the money and get a paint sprayer, or rent one from your local hardware store or use foam rollers, which is what we did. They are awesome!!!

They leave a really smooth finish. The one thing I would watch out for is dust, lint, hair or any kind of debris in the room you are painting in. It is very easy to get that stuck in the paint, which can be frustrating.


Our first step, after removing all the doors/drawers and setting them on a drop cloth in one of our spare bedrooms, was to prime the heck out of them. Because they are very old they were lacquered up like craaaazy! We didn't have the patience to sit there and sand them all, so we opted for Kilz primer instead. It took about three coats.
Side Note:
I have read that oil based paints are better for painting wood, but they are very hard to find on a budget. Home Depot and Menard's don't carry any oil based paints; you would have to go to a specialty store for that. We found that latex paint actually worked just fine and its way cheaper.


After priming the cabinets and letting them dry between coats, we started painting them grey. That also took about 2-3 coats. This task takes a lot of time, but it was totally worth it to do extra coats.



We noticed that after they were all painted and we attached the cabinet doors back on they were chipping very easily. We knew we had to do something to protect them so I read fellow bloggers sites and found a product that worked great!

Minwax Polycrylic Protective Finish.

So all the doors came off again and we did about 2-3 coats of this also.









The After:

We love the way it turned out!

Before and After: