Glopped on layers of thick paint in a flat finish. A ballillion brush marks. Every time I would wipe the cabinets down paint would rub off. This paint job was a total half ass attempt to make the kitchen look better so that it could sell (the cabinets were all black when they first listed but after almost a year of sitting on the market they had to neutralize the color palette in the whole house, I mean they had "Bloody Mary Red" on the walls before and toned it down to a neutral green). Well we knew from the very moment we saw them that we had to redo them but that didn't bother us, we are no strangers to this type of hard work. We love a good DIY makeover! We had redone all of the wood floors before we moved in and we were running out of steam so we figured we would tackle the cabinets later down the road. We switched out the appliances, the light fixture and painted the faux brick backsplash to hold us off a little longer you can read more about that here.
We can't afford a major kitchen overhaul but we can work with what we have and be a lot happier in our home now. This was an out of the blue project, so since we hadn't set a budget for this, I wanted to save as much as possible by using products I already had. Luckily I am a painter and I have an arsenal of painting supplies.
Here is a list of the supplies we used
- Frog tape and Sharpie marker
- Paint stripper
- Painting brush
- Spatula
- Paint thinner
- Steel wool pads grade #0000
- Cleaning rags
- Wood Filler
- Sand paper 60 grit and 220 grit
- Palm Sander
- Celebratory bottle of wine of your choice
Before you begin stripping the kitchen cabinets you have to prep. First number your doors with the frog tape and Sharpie, remove all the doors and place all the hardware in a zip-lock bag. Cover counter tops and appliances with drop cloths or plastic. Now you are ready to begin the stripping process.
Apply paint stripper with painting brush to the frames and doors in generous amounts. Let it sit for more than 15 minutes, you will see the paint start to bubble up. Use your spatula to scrape off the layers of paint and then clean off the leftover residue with the paint thinner and your steel wool pads. Then Clean them with a damp rag.
Prep all the doors for sanding, if you are going to change your hardware of placement of the hardware fill the holes where the hardware used to be with wood filler. Use a palm sander with 60 grit sand paper to remove finish and then follow with 220 grit to smooth down the wood.
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| After cleaning with paint thinner, I painted the inside in charcoal |
When you are done, pat yourself on the back, take a shower and enjoy a well deserved glass of wine while watching some Grey's Anatomy on Netflix to celebrate being done stripping paint off the kitchen cabinets.
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