Painting kitchen cabinets is an age-old way of giving cabinets a fresh, clean, and up-to-date look. When you contrast the cost of paint and materials (under $200) to the dizzily high cost of new kitchen cabinets, painting seems like a no-brainer.
Except for one thing: it s harder than it looks. Before launching head-first into this project, though, keep yourself in check by remembering that every single item must be taken out and stored, doors and drawers need to be removed, every surface to be painted needs thorough cleaning, and the insides of the cabinets need to be addressed somehow (painting them, Con-Tact paper, or leaving them alone).
Kit. Kits have their advantage because they include most (but usually not all) of the correct materials you need and exclude the incorrect ones (vinyl latex paint, for instance, which will peel off the cabinets). But kits tend to be expensive--more expensive than the sum of their parts. Cabinet Transformations from Rustoleum is a multi-stage process that lets you paint wood, melamine, and laminate cabinets (previously, I have featured a similar process from Rustoleum called Countertop Transformations ). It s a four-step process: deglosser, bond coat, glaze, and top coat.
Assemble Materials Yourself. 100% acrylic or oil-based paints are your main ingredients for painting your cabinets yourself. Since this project entails a significant amount of prep work, you ll also need things like TSP, sandpaper, tackcloth. primer, putty knife, and so on.
