Painting kitchen cabinets

Maddie&EthansMom wrote: Has anyone ever done this? I'm wanting to paint our cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms/laundry room. We have the same cabinets all throughout the house and I don't like the stain color and it's too much work to re-stain them.

Do I have to sand them before I paint them? Or just use a primer?

Boys r us replied: I don't have a clue Aimee..but my gut tells me you probably should sand them to get the finish off of them, so that the paint will stay on!

luvmykids replied: On a lot of the home shows, like Trading Spaces, they just lightly sand them first, but my parents had that done and the painter said especially in the kitchen they need to be really sanded AND primed, because of grease that builds up.

coasterqueen replied: I'd ask Ryan but he's sawing logs right now with Kylie. But I believe that's what Dh did in our old house, was sand them down first then he probably put some KILZ on it then paint. You may be able to get by with just several coats of paint, though. But I'm no expert, Ryan's the one in the family that has painted houses, built them, and done maintenance work for slum lords, so I know he's done it.

5littleladies replied: When we did ours we just painted them, but I would suggest lightly sanding them then a coat of primer. I haven't had any problems with chipping or anything like that, but I really wish I had thought to seal them with a varnish or something like that because man has it been hard to keep them clean.

C&K*s Mommie replied: What everyone else said, sand then paint. I would use the Kilz stain killer as Karen said, then paint over that.
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On the oppisite side: I seriously thought about refinishing ours- myself. But I posed to question here and Monica responded with an answer that made me have to think long and hard on that. Now I want to have someone come in to repaint ours. I hate the stain color on ours too.

mysweetpeasWil&Wes replied: I would definitely sand them before putting primer on. You'll never get paint to stick to the varnish properly. My parents actually had a company just "reface" their cabinets (they went from the old 70's dark oak to white). I'm sure it's a lot more $$ than painting them, but it's just another option if you wanted a change, but didn't want to completely take down the whole cabinet, kwim?

Crystalina replied: I would never paint, unless your cabinets are really hopeless. I did that in my last house. I painted the kitchen and I don't know what I was thinking. I painted the cabinets that Martha Stewart green. I liked it for about a month and then I went with like a shabby-chic white and then I started going tex-mex and in the middle of that I wanted to just die! By then I was kicking myself in the butt because I missed my wood. Thank God I got pregnant and we moved.

That's what happens when I watch Trading Spaces! Oh, it was just terrible at the end. I could have removed all the paint but that is soooo much work. I don't even watch that show anymore.

I hope you have better luck than I did.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: Crystalina you sound just like my dad. He'll surely die if he finds out we are painting our cabinets. I will replace the drawer/cabinet pulls and see how I like it and go from there.

I really hate the wood color and staining is a lot of work. I want black cabinets. We don't have the money to replace the cabinets right now and this is a cheap fix until we do. So, more than likely by the time I get sick of it, we will have replaced them.

Thanks for your suggestions.

C&K*s Mommie replied: Be sure to get the before and after pix, Aimee.

3xsthefun replied: When we painted our kitchen/ and other cabinets we used stain killer first and then painted them.

MyBlueEyedBabies replied: When we re-did our kitchen cabinets we had to take off about 10 layers of paint first so I know we had to sand...If it's stained and there isn't a thick varnish on them I would say sand them pretty goo not to bare wood but descent, then a good primer and then paint.
A fairly inexpensive way to re do them is at home depot you can measure the doors then then buy new door and droor fronts and they sell stuff to re face the rest but that I found was much easier to paint. After a long time of trying to refinish the cabinet faces I gave up but these things were awesome.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: Lisa that was a good suggestion. We will have to buy new doors. Ours are literally falling apart. They crack if you look at them wrong. They are just old, I guess b/c the cabinet quality is good.

Maddie&EthansMom replied:
Oh yes...I will

We won't start working on it until later this year. I still have to finish my study. (hopefully tomorrow)

I promise I'll have pics of it, too.

jacobsmama replied: My cousin painted hers and I LOVE THEM. She did sand them first.

luvmykids replied:
That is so me! I could seriously write a book about my big Trading Spaces inspirations that turned out sooooo wrong! Dh won't LET me watch it anymore, after the last fiasco when I tore up paper bags, crinkled them up, and pasted them on a wall with modge podge.

Bee_Kay replied: LOL Monica.... you are too funny!!

Maddie&EthansMom replied:
We have a wall like this. What did you do wrong? Ours looks great. I know so many people who have done it in their house after seeing ours.

luvmykids replied:
I don't know, it was supposed to look leatherish, but just looked like crumpled paper bags pasted on with modge podge. Maybe I missed a step? Glad yours turned out though, I loved the look on the show.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: I'm sorry..I didn't mean for it to sound like YOU did something wrong. I was just wondering why you didn't like it. (bad choice of words I used )

I crumpled ours up and used wallpaper paste. I kind of let it soak in it so it would get darker in some areas and take on the leather look. Sorry yours didn't turn out the way you would have liked.

luvmykids replied:
I didn't take it that way ...

I think the problem was the modge podge, it wasn't thick enough maybe? I'm not sure, but it ended up looking like crumpled paper bags instead of leather I wish I could try again, b/c I really did love the look, but we're in a rental right now