White White Kitchen

This post has been a long time coming... as most of them seem to be these days. My cabinet painting adventure started in late January, finishing up early February. I have wanted to paint my kitchen cabinets white from day one. At one point, my mom briefly had me talked into keeping them wood, then I was back to white. And I must say, white was the right choice. The kitchen is bright, full of light, and plain ol' makes me smile.

I posted updated pictures on the house tour tab but it has taken me a long time to get around to writing this post. Maybe because I knew it would be a long one. This definitely isn't a full tutorial... for a great one (complete with video) check out this post on Young House Love. It is one of the posts I looked at (and made T.J. watch) before we embarked on the long cabinet painting adventure. I figured it would take us about 4 days, then drying time but it stretched over 2 weeks due to a 2 day trip home (meant to be the drying time, but we weren't finished yet) and going back to work.

We started in the logical place - taking down the cabinet doors and removing the hardware. I wiped the cabinets down with a wet cloth first, then  T.J. deglossed them (we did this inside because it was cold - but it was very stinky. I suggest outside if you can swing it). It is unbelievable the amount of crud that builds up on cabinet doors and hinges. At least now we will be able to see the crud and clean it on the white doors. (Maybe that's not such a good thing?)

Kitchens would really be a mess without cabinet doors to hide everything. The picture below is proof.

To keep things as organized as possible I put the hinges and hardware inside each cabinet as we removed the doors - that way hinges stayed with the same doors in the end.

Next step - priming. Both our deglosser and our primer (Zinsser Fast Prime 2) claimed to be "sand free" so we skipped sanding. I guess this is a big no-no in cabinet painting but it seems to have worked out pretty well for us so far. Fingers crossed for the long haul. I started out brushing on the primer in the cracks while T.J. filled in the flatter parts with the roller.

After 1 coat of primer

Basically we just repeated the steps with the regular white paint letting each side dry overnight before flipping. We used Kitchen and Bath Semi-Gloss white paint from Menards. We ended up putting on two coats of primer and as many as five coats of white paint. It was way more than we had predicted we would use, but in the end every coat was worth the results.

After working on our knees for a few days we figured out this handy solution.

Meanwhile, we were working on painting the cabinet frames over in the kitchen. Since our doors and drawers were laid out in our living room and the kitchen was clearly a disaster, most of our house was unlivable for a short period of time. Judging by the cookie sheets in the sink though - I must have found a way to make cookies!

 
One thing we did get to do before we left on our trip up north was put in a few drawers. We left them open so they wouldn't cure closed, but at least they were in.

Oh the little successes in life. A few days later all the painting and drying work was done. Time to enjoy our kitchen. Except for one thing. I had originally planned to use the pre-existing hardware (which I transformed from ugly brass to beautiful ORB in this post earlier this fall) but when we held it back up to our shiny new white cabinets, it was bringing me down. I wanted something shiny and new to match the cabinets! I finally settled on silver handles (the same ones I picked out when I redid the bathroom cabinet awhile back). One bonus is that they are sold in builders packs, so they are cheaper. Even with a cheaper model of handle we ended up spending just about as much on hardware as we did for the cabinet deglosser/paint/primer combo (around $40 - for a total of $80 on this project not counting supplies we already owned like rollers and paintbrushes). Funny how that works. Definitely worth it though. The silver handles made a big difference. I still have plans to do something about the hinges, but for now I think the dark brown isn't too offensive.

Quickly after we put the cabinet doors back up we realized we needed to put pads on the back of each door to keep them from sticking. Even though the frame and the back of the door had been dry for at least 5 days, they were beginning to peel paint off each other. We just bought some gray felt pads to protect them for now, and may invest in a more expensive white version later on. We have had no problems since adding the pads.

Check out our shiny new juicer in this one ^

 

The one drawback to shiny new white cabinets.... the rest of the appliances/wall/countertop look a little more dull. I guess this is why people do full kitchen reno's at once. It is hard to stop. I have already finished another kitchen project since painting the cabinets... more on that soon.