Difficulty: Beginner
I decided to paint my kitchen cabinets six months ago. Let’s back up. I decided to paint my kitchen cabinets about a year ago and then started the process of deciding on paint color and hardware. I read a bunch of blog posts because though I have painted kitchen cabinets before I wanted a little more know how.
Short Cut
Fast forward to six months ago when I decided to bite the bullet and start the process, which I thought wasn’t going to be such a process. I had read many blog posts claiming that I could paint my wood cabinets without sanding or priming. There was this magical product that would drastically reduce my working time.
My cabinets before I started the process.
Being a fairly lazy person by nature I was all too willing to try this product and skip two steps. I tend to get excited about projects, but a third to half way through I get bored and stop or rush through the remaining work to get to the end. Not good, I know. I figured removing the time consuming steps of this whole process would ensure that I would finish my project in a timely fashion.
Fast forward to the present and I am still painting my kitchen cabinets. What happened? Well, life happened for starters. I have four kids and they keep me really busy. I have this blog that I put a lot of time and effort into. I have a household to run, so cooking, cleaning, laundry and all of my other responsibilities slowed down my progress.
Short Cuts Don’t Always Work
As my project was dragging on something happened. The miracle product I tried in place of sanding and priming hadn’t worked. The paint was starting to peel in several places. Imagine a kitchen with wood uppers, gray bottom, chipping paint and no doors on the bottom. It looked like this for about six months.
Chipping paint six months after being painted.
I had dragged my feet on painting the doors, because I wanted to change the hardware and knew there would be extra steps, so I kept putting it off. About two months after I had first started painting the paint started to chip. I realized that I would have to go back and sand and prime and repaint. My short cut came back to bite me in the butt. In my attempt to reduce my work load I had created a whole lot more work.
My Old Friend Procrastination
I procrastinated for months. Every time my parents came over one of them would ask when I was going to finish the cabinets. I kept making the excuse that I had to redo the painting that I had already done. That I had to take the time to change out the hardware. I think I was imagining that somehow all of this free time was going to open up on my calendar and I could devote all of my efforts toward painting the cabinets.
What was I thinking?! Free time on my calendar? Maybe when I’m 80! Two weeks ago I got back to it, and I’m still working on it, but I have already sanded and primed everything. I filled in all the holes in the doors and painted the upper and lower cabinets. Today I finished painting the bottom doors, added the new knobs and hung the bottom doors. After six months there are doors on my bottom cabinets. Slowly it’s coming together.
As I finish this process I will start to post several tutorials, so that you can avoid my mistakes. You can get a great paint job on your cabinets and be proud of a job well done. That feeling of satisfaction after completing a big project is just under the surface ready to bubble over. I’m almost there. I can do this! Are you ready to start the process? Read How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets the Right Way Part:1 here.
