Cabinet Painting DIY

I’ve been staring at these cabinets thinking I wanted to change them (paint or stain them something different) cause the colour of them when we bought our home was a little too yellow for my taste. Eventually I decided to just bite the bullet and paint these cabinets white.

After watching a few tutorials and reading up on the products available for the job I felt nervous to try this myself for the first time, but just went for it regardless. What was the worst that was going to happen? 

What you will Need:

• rag or cleaning cloth
• dish soap
• sandpaper (80 grit)
• paintbrush
• cabinet/furniture primer
• cabinet/furniture paint

STEP 1: Cleaning

First things first, we need to clean the cabinets. If they are anything like mine they may not be dusted as often as they should be (or like not dusted at all, no judgement here). I simply used a cloth and some dish soap to clean all the cabinet and drawer fronts, don’t forget the back of the cabinet doors as well. If you prefer a more thorough clean you can use a product designed for that, but simple soap will do the trick in most cases.

STEP 2: Sanding

Now comes the fun part (not at all). We need to sand the surface to help the primer and paint have something to stick to. Most cabinets will have a finish on them that makes them smooth and we are sanding that as paint will not stick to this finish layer well. Start off with a sandpaper grit of around 80 to get a rough sanding. Once you have sanded all of the surfaces give everything another wipe down with a damp cloth to remove all the dust.

STEP 3: Primer

Finally we are getting to the good stuff. Some people may skip this step and go straight to painting, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to use primer and I think it really helped with the paint finish looking better. This is pretty self explanatory, we are going to prime all of our cabinets. I did two coats of primer for better coverage, but we are going to cover this with paint anyways afterwards so it does not need to be perfect.

STEP 4: Paint

The step we have all been waiting for is here! Time to paint the cabinet the colour of your choosing (I went with white). This is the part in the process that I saw a real transformation from where I had started. I used a roller on the majority of this project to get a smoother finish and only used a paintbrush for small grooves where the roller did not cover. If you want a really smooth finish you could sand using a fine grit sandpaper in 120 or higher, or if you really want to go all out and use a paint sprayer that would do the trick as well. I chose to keep it simple and just took my time making even strokes with the grain of the wood using my paint roller. I also completed two coats of paint to make sure I had even coverage on the whole cabinet.

COMPLETE!

You made it to the end! Be proud of yourself for taking on this project. For some it may seem easier than to others, but I promise you if I can do it so can you, just take your time and believe in yourself. The scariest part of this entire thing for me was getting started, but once I had it all just kinda worked.

Hopefully this tutorial was helpful, and let me know if you try this yourself or tag me in it over on Instagram @benjamin_interiors.