KITCHEN // painting everything

9/7/2017

Painting. Some people love it, some people loath it. I'm somewhere in between.

Painting is the easiest way to quickly change the feel of a room, but sometimes it can be tedious, messy and a general pain in the rear. Especially painting cabinets. Did I care? nope. Did it anyway and I don't regret it at all!

When we moved in, our entire house was warm colors: the floor, the walls, the counter tops. I'm talking brown. Brown and dark yellow. I couldn't resist the 2017 dusty blue/grey trend. Here are my paint colors throughout my entire house:

PICKING PAINT COLORS

I opted to choose all my paint colors all at once. I think it helped the "feel" of my house and the flow from room to room or something like that? It also helped that Lowe's was having a rebate on paint...

Anyway, I found this great chart for choosing paint finishes for each type of room.

I used garage floor paint for my lower kitchen cabinets for several reasons:

it adheres to anything
it covered well
I can spill anything on it and wipe clean without worrying about warping my not-so-expensive cabinets.
It's cheap-ish

GENERAL TIPS

Buy the good rollers and brushes.

Don't skimp. Been there. Done that. It was bad and took twice as long to paint. I ended up going back to buy the good stuff later so I actually wasted money. I'm an avid believer in Dollar Tree, but it just won't work for painting tools.

Don't be lazy and leave the light switch cover on.

Electrical covers have literally 2 screws in them. Take. Them. Off. And don't lose them!

Paint entire wall with the same bucket of paint.

All paint is mixed, so every single can has the potential for variation. The worst thing in the world is to get halfway through a wall and run out of paint, only to find that your second bucket of paint is slightly different than your first.

Painter's tape. Use it.

It really will make your life so much easier.

ACTUALLY PAINTING

c a b i n e t s

Painting cabinets is a bear and everyone has their own opinion and tricks. My cabinets were already painted with a paint/primer combo, so luckily I skipped this step! Some might yell at me for it, but they've been fine so far.

Here's what I did:

PREPPING:

removed the cabinet doors and drawers
sanded everything
dusted with an old CLEAN paintbrush
wiped with TSP cleaner
sanded again
dust again
wiped with TSP cleaner again
caulked the cabinet doors & let that dry

PAINTING:

finally painted the first coat--make every coat really thin. They'll look horrible at first, but you're going to do about 3948023948 coats, so no worries!
I let mine dry for at least 12 hours
I painted at least 5 coats of the white, but only three of the grey.

So hind sight is always 20/20. Looking back, I wish I had used a roller on my cabinet doors. It would've given a smoother finish.

ONEGIRLMANYIDEA's Tips and tricks on how to paint cabinets and kitchen walls.

STEP 1: remove cabinet doors and drawers.

STEP 2: sand everything.

STEP 3: wipe down with TSP solution.

STEP 4: paint your first THIN coat! Company is welcome. Even sleeping company.

STEP 5: give the first coat several hours to dry--maybe even overnight. Paint your second THIN coat! Yes, Orange is the New Black kept me entertained.

STEP 2408094: paint your last THIN coat. I did 5 for the white upper cabinets and 3 for the dark lower cabinets.

w a l l s

Painting walls is way easier than cabinets.

sand down where cabinets used to be
dust
spackle any holes
LIGHTLY sand the spackle flat
dust
edge (you need the pictured edger)
paint with roller
thin coats but not too thin

With two of us we were able to knock this room out pretty quickly. Nathan painted the walls while I painted the cabinets in the other room. I know this looks totally wrong and doesn't follow my step by steps. We didn't worry too much about the edging at the top since we planned on raising the cabinets to the ceiling.