mouse over test

Last summer, we decided to paint our kitchen cabinets which led to painting and re-building our entertainment center, painting our built-in bookcases and mantel, ripping out the tile and installing a laminate floor, and all sorts of other projects. I put off writing this post, because this was a very involved project that led to many other projects and I just haven't had time to write up everything.

We bought our 1984 house 18 months ago and it had a TON of honey oak cabinets everywhere. After about 6 months I couldn't take it anymore and decided to paint all the honey oak in the kitchen-greatroom.

Here is the way my kitchen looked when we moved in.
Hover your mouse over this photo to see what it looks like now.

One of my cabinets was built for a garbage can and has a fancy pull out bottom, but I like having my recycling bin and garbage out for easy access.

Hover your mouse over the photo below.

Hover your mouse over the photo below.

We moved the light fixture with a swag kit which you can read about here: Spray Painting and Moving a Light Fixture
Hover your mouse over the photo below.


I kept the doors off the cabinet above the desk to give it a more open feel. I keep my cookbooks here and like to have quick and easy access.
I used paint stripper, sanded to top of the desk and bought the darkest stain I could find. I applied several coats of stain to get it nice and dark and then I applied several coats of polyurethane.

This is what I originally planned for this desk, but I soon decided that I didn't like the computer in the kitchen and would rather have a bulletin board and bright red retro phone.

I bought this phone at Amazon for free with my Swag Bucks and I LOVE it! The cordless phones in my house seem to disappear and I can never find one when I need it. No one can walk away with this phone and I no longer miss calls. I installed a talking caller id (also from Amazon) under the cabinet which is the round looking thing. I LOVE having my calendar, phone, phone numbers, and other important papers right here in the heart of the home.

Hover your mouse over this photo to see what it looks like now.

The Process:

Since our tile floor was a 90s pink salmon color and cracked in many places, we decided not to worry about getting paint on it. Later on in the remodel we discovered the floor was uneven due to water damage, which is why the tile was cracked in so many places. You can see that post here: Laminate Floor

Instead of sanding, I cleaned all the cabinets with TSP. We also did the entertainment center, mantel, and built-in bookcases at the same time and there is no way I was going to sand all of that oak!

Painting all of the cabinets with a brush would have taken forever, so we bought this Wagner Control Spray for around $50. We had to thin out the paint with water, but we did several coats and it gave us a beautiful and smooth finish.

I didn't like the placement of the knobs, so we filled in all the holes (My husband and I are both short and the knobs on the taller upper cabinets were way too high for us).

We took off all the doors and taped up the countertops.

I bought lots of paint samples and experimented before deciding on the right colors. Since there are a LOT of cabinets (one of the reasons I fell in love with this house) I thought I should break up the monotony and do the bottom cabinets a different color.

We used Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer and had it tinted for the bottom cabinets. The primer claims to work on glossy surfaces with no sanding necessary and it did.

Here is everything we used:
1. TSP to clean the cabinets and prep for painting.
2. Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer (had some tinted to match the bottom cabinets).
3. Behr flat paint matched to Martha Stewart Mourning Dove for the bottom cabinets.
We sprayed 3 coats and used flat paint since we painted polyurethane on top.
4. Behr flat paint matched to Sherwin-Williams Alabaster for the top cabinets. We sprayed 3 coats.
5. MinWax water based oil-modified polyurethane clear semi-gloss. We tried to spray this, but it ran and looked terrible. We brushed 3 coats of this on all the cabinets creating a nice hard finish. This did darken the paint making the alabaster white a much darker cream, which I was planning on when I chose alabaster.
6. A contractors pack of stainless steel knobs and some Martha Stewart pulls for the drawers.

It has now been a year since we painted these cabinets and they are still beautiful and durable. Painting all those coats of polyurethane has really paid off and makes cleaning the cabinets really easy.