Painting the Kitchen Cabinets

When we bought our house, this is what the kitchen looked like . . . 

not bad, but definitely not me

One of my decorating philosophies is, "if it doesn't match, paint it!" But, one of my pet peeves about painted cabinets is that you can see the brush strokes. I use spray paint a lot and I had seen a commercial for a new kind of spray paint that I had a feeling would work on cabinets. So off I went to Home Depot (one of my favorite places to be . . . .seriously . . . sometimes I just go and roam aimlessly through the aisles, looking at all the cool stuff they have). I got the spray paint I wanted, did a test patch on the back of one of my cabinet doors, saw that it would work, then went back and bought every can of this paint they had. The best part about using the spray paint is that I didn't have to sand the cabinets before hand, I just started spraying.

I knew I could remove the doors and paint them, but the rest of the cabinet was going to be an issue. So I bought a can of black paint in the satin finish and used an artists brush. It took a long time to do, but you can't see any brush strokes on the cabinets at all. 

The whole process took about a week. The longest part was waiting for the paint to dry. I didn't have a lot of  spray paint space, so I could only do 3 doors at a time. Multiply that by 2 coats each side, with the drying time in between. I wasn't rushed for time, so it didn't really matter. 

I couldn't be happier with the finished product. I am glad that I chose the satin finish, the gloss would have been too shiny. (It looks shinier in the picture than it does in real life.) I love how you can still see the wood grain.

It's been about a year since I finished, and the paint job has held up very well. Every once in a while the paint will get chipped, but I just break out my artists brush and in no time it's back to beautiful. 

I also just redid the backsplash . . . but I'm saving that for another post.