How to Paint Your Old Kitchen Cabinet Doors

After a few years of the same old look and layout, many homeowners decide to give their kitchen a makeover. This can be a terrific way to breathe new life into an existing space and make your kitchen more exciting and interesting to spend time in, as well as bringing it up to date with the latest trends or your more recent tastes and preferences.

What's more, there are many ways to refresh and revitalize your kitchen, and they don't all involve installing new kitchen cabinets or cabinet replacing. You can simply invest in some affordable cabinet refinishing or repainting to give the space a fresh new look without spending too much time, effort, or money on the job.

Painting your old kitchen cabinet doors is one of the best budget-friendly options out there, and it's so simple too. All you really need is some paint, a few simple materials, and a free weekend to get the work done. This guide will highlight some of the key steps to follow and mistakes to avoid to get the best results from your cabinet refinishing.

Get the Right Tools for the Job

Before beginning any kind of cabinet painting, as with any other kind of DIY job around the house, it's important to assemble the right tools and materials for the task at hand. The specific tools you'll need may vary, depending on how you want to tackle the project, but you'll usually need screwdrivers, sandpaper, paint rollers, trays, buckets, and liners.

You'll also need to have the right paint, and it's important to choose correctly, as certain paints are specially made for certain materials, like solid wood or laminate. Make sure you know what your cabinets are made from and choose a paint to match, asking an expert for advice if you need it. It's also recommended to choose acrylic paint over vinyl, as acrylic is more durable and easier to clean.

Make sure you don’t have maintaining problems

Once you are going to renovate your kitchen and you have already started all the mess in your kitchen it would be also useful to check if you have any plumbing issued under your cabinets. If you are sure you can check and handle the problems, do it. If not, call a plumber. Even if you think that everything is fine, it won’t be unnecessary to make sure that you won’t need to take off your new beautiful kitchen cabinets for renovations. This will save you a lot of time and nerves and will prevent further maintenance problems. After the checkup you can go back to the doors of your kitchen cabinets and be all creative.

Label Everything Before You Start

Painting your cabinet doors while they're in place on the cabinets isn't generally recommended, as it can be difficult to cover all the edges cleanly and spillages are likely to happen. Instead, you'll want to remove the doors from the cabinets and paint them in a safe, convenient space for you. However, before you get started with this part of the job, it's important to take a moment to label everything.

Labeling your individual cabinets, doors, and handles will prove very useful later on when it's time to put everything back together. Without labels, you might find yourself struggling to remember where each door goes and struggle to reassemble your kitchen correctly, so be sure not to overlook this step. Once it's done, you can begin removing the knobs, handles, and hinges.

Clean and Sand Before Painting

After taking down the cabinet doors, you'll probably want to start on the painting as soon as possible in order to see the fruits of your labor, but it's important to do everything in the correct order in order to get the best possible results, and one of the most important steps of the process is cleaning and sanding your doors before you paint them.

Since they get exposed to lots of grease and cooking contaminants in the air, kitchen cabinets can be surprisingly dirty. Take some time to clean them off with a degreasing solution and then sand them down to get rid of all the gloss from the previous surface. This will give you a smoother surface to paint on and allow your primer and paint to adhere much more easily. You can use either an electric sander or simple sheets of sandpaper.

Priming and Painting

Once your cabinet doors have been cleaned and sanded, it's time for the cabinet painting to begin. Make sure you choose an airy space to do your painting, as fumes can be quite dangerous in enclosed spaces, and put down some liners in order to protect your floors, as well as wearing any necessary personal protective equipment and opening windows as needed.

Once your painting environment has been prepared and the doors are properly positioned on your painting table, you can get to work. It's wise to prime before you paint, as this will help the paint apply more evenly and give you a truly professional result, and try to use long, even strokes as you paint in order to get the best possible look when the job is done.

Have Patience

One final top tip to keep in mind when it comes to painting cabinet doors is to have patience. Make sure to follow the manufacturer guidelines for products like paint and primer, and wait the recommended amount of time for the paint to dry properly before doing anything else. You may also need to sand and clean your doors once more in between coats and they may need to cure for a couple of days before being rehung.

Try not to rush through the process. Rushing will only increase the risk of mistakes or problems occurring. For example, if you try to rehang the doors before they're totally cured and dry, they might stick to the cabinets or make a mess as you move them around, or if you rush through the painting and don't let each coat dry sufficiently, you might find that the final results aren't as impressive as you intended.