Sometimes my painted cabinet work is part of a larger kitchen re-hab, but as with this recent project – sometimes painting the cabinets IS the re-hab!

My clients Terry and Mariana didn’t love their tired oak cabinets, but ripping them out and re-doing their kitchen just wasn’t a priority! Rather than dealing with the time, cost and upheaval associated with remodeling, they called me to see if painting the cabinets would give them the face-lift they were looking for.

When I visited, I saw that the cabinets were in decent shape and a good candidate for painting – so we were on to a discussion of color. Outside of the cabinets themselves, Terry and Mariana’s décor is modern and clean, with grays, black and deep brown. We discussed going with white, but we ultimately felt this would look out of place and would accentuate the green counter-top. Instead, we decided to go with a nice neutral gray to flow nicely with the adjacent spaces and work with the counter color.

From there, I was on to my normal process. I removed the cabinet doors to work on back at my studio and proceeded to scrub and sand the cabinet frames to prepare them for a bonding primer to insure the paint would adhere. With the primer applied, it was on to another round of sanding and the first coat of the cabinet paint. After this dried overnight, I did a last round of sanding and applied a second coat of the cabinet paint for the final finish.

With this complete, I was back to my studio to do the same process with the doors. After about a week, I returned to re-install the doors and the new hardware Terry and Mariana had chosen. The “new” cabinets made a huge difference!

Most importantly, Terry and Mariana are enjoying their “new” kitchen!

Below are some pictures showing the before and after of this project

Enjoy,

Jason