painted kitchen cabinets

This week I’m working on a set of kitchen cabinets for a client.  Her house is only ten years old and her cabinets are in almost new condition, the problem is they’re the not-so-lovely honey oak widely installed by builders in early 2000.  She wants something less orange.

I’ve painted loads of kitchen cabinets, so I have a few tips and tricks I’ve learned mostly by trial and error and some traces of what I learned from my friend Dan, who showed me years ago how to use a compressor and sprayer.

Since my garage has only a sliver of unoccupied space and the lighting is less than desirable for painting, I use my carport.  I wrap it with plastic drop cloth to keep the paint in and keep dust, dirt, leaves and moisture out.  https://www.mimzyandcompany.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=1073&type=image&TB_iframe=1

I set my cabinet doors on 1×4’s held up by mostly sawhorses and other objects about the same height.  The last time I hung my cabinet doors with eye hooks,  to allow them to rotate in the air so both sides could be painted at once, but that requires a lot more space with this many doors.It’s a lot easier on your back if the cabinets are set at counter height.

I raise my doors off the 1 x 4’s with roofing nails …seen above, to keep the paint from pooling up on the edges.  The hardware stores carry paint pyramids made for this purpose but that would have been very costly for this many doors.  I use painters tape over the tops of the orange caps to keep the nails from scratching my doors and it works like a charm.  I used this critter sprayer along with my compressor.  It’s super simple to operate and clean and the best part is that it uses standard mason jars which can be purchased at the grocery store.  Which means I can have several mason jars loaded with different product(paint, poly, primer) and all I have to clean to switch between products is the nozzle.  Love that!

A short video of my spray booth ….and basically the same information repeated, but probably easier to understand.

Pretty boring stuff.  I don’t have any before and after photos of this yet(the fun stuff).  Hopefully I’ll have some down the road a bit.  I’ve been entirely too swamped with Christmas deadlines.  I started the process with this client in September with a Thanksgiving deadline in mind, but she couldn’t make up her mind on the sample and then her contractor that did the carpentry to bring the upper boxes to the ceiling and install crown moulding took longer than expected.  So everything got pushed back.   What’s new, right?

Anyway….glad to be finished with that project.  One more sewing project to finish the beginning of this week and then off to celebrate the Birth of our Lord.

Merry Christmas!!!

xoxo

Mimz