So, remember me dreaming of a white kitchen? Well, I finally got me a white kitchen! And I didn’t spend a fortune on it either. Take a look at our builder basic kitchen before we painted the cabinets white.
Nothing awful but I’m not an orangey-oak, grainy wood kinda gal. All the kitchen pictures in my inspiration folder are of light, airy kitchens with either white or light gray cabinets.
Since our walls are already a gray color, I thought white cabinets would fit in nicely. However, I didn’t have $10,000 sitting around (nor did I want to slap that down on a credit card) for new, custom white cabinets. Needless to say, it was pretty easy to decide on PAINTING our current oak cabinets white. Yes, that’s right, I said PAINTING over oak cabinets. (My dad and grandpa are uneasy over this latest turn of events…being quite the handymen and thinking it a crime to paint oak.)
First, we removed all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts (and by ‘we’ I mean my hubby) and emptied the cabinets of their contents. Our entire kitchen contents lived on/under our dining table for about a week.
The next step was to lightly sand and degloss all cabinetry surfaces.
Then we (this time I really mean ‘we’) primed and painted the cabinet frames that remained on the walls. For maximum benefit, we let the primer cure well longer than the recommended time. Same for the two coats of paint.
We chose an oil-based primer and latex enamel paint for durability. (These cabinets have to put up with our two little boys.) Both were purchased from Sherwin-Williams at one of their 20% off weekend sales. The total cost in primer and paint was less than $80! Once the frames on the wall were painted, our kitchen looked like this for 2 months while we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
We contemplated buying or renting a spray gun for the doors and drawer fronts. But after reading about how difficult they could be to clean and how thinning the paint correctly took some trial-and-error, we looked into having someone spray them for us professionally. Unfortunately, all the quotes were well over $2000… more than we were willing to spend. We had every inclination to just prime and paint them by hand but knew it would be a loooong time before we were able to complete that task… it was January in Ohio… we didn’t want to paint them indoors…plus we have two kiddos that take up most of our time…not to mention jobs. Then we found DJ. DJ was hard up for some work, had a decent portfolio and wanted $280 total to caulk, prime and paint all the doors and drawer fronts. Yippee! And he did it in 5 days. (DJ will definitely be considered for more time-consuming painting projects in our home!)
We got our doors and drawers back from DJ, then looked to IKEA for hardware. We decided on the LANSA handles. Luckily, I had $75 in gift certificates so we only spent $15 out of pocket on hardware.
Steve also made an extra trip back to IKEA for a handy tool to help him line up drill holes for the hardware. It put us back another $2. Here’s the drill template in action.
So, 2 months and $375 later, our kitchen now looks like this.
It’s not 100% finished. I plan on adding a glass front door to the upper cabinet, left of the sink. And Steve is trying to find an organizational rack for the pots and pans in the lower cabinet, left of the fridge. We’ve also been putting away money every month for the last 3 months to upgrade our sink, faucet and countertops. More to come on those changes soon…
But, for now, we are basking in the white-ish glow of our newly painted kitchen cabinets! I might even take up cooking.
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Those look great. We have similar cabinets and I am thinking about doing the same thing but I was curious if you can see the grain through the paint or does the paint “hide” the grain? I’m kind of like your dad and grandpa and don’t necessarily want to paint over oak but I don’t like the current look and just wanted to get some of your thoughts. Thanks.
Just a few points for clarification. On the frames we used a TSP cleaner and a liquid deglosser (no sanding as to keep the dust down in the house). We did a VERY light scuff sand to the sides of the frames that were laminated (thin pieces of fiberboard w/ a picture of wood on them) so the primer would have something to stick to. As for the doors, we sanded them down to the wood with an orbital sander and sand sponge.
On the painting, DJ used a technique which involved brushing the inlays and then rolling the flat surfaces with a smooth-finish foam roller, and he did a fantastic job!
As for the cabinet drill template, it’s called FIXA and is located right by the hardware at IKEA. It was the only one I could find that would work with such long cabinet handles. Not bad for $2!
Lastly, my wife rocks!! And I hope she takes up cooking!!
Handy Hubby – Thanks for all the detail clarifications, Steve… quite the engineer.
Chris Roscoe – If you look at the cabinets just the right way, like if you are directly beneath them and look up, the overhead recessed lighting shines down and you can see the grain. You can’t see the grain just by looking at the cabinets straight on, whether the lights are on/off. You’ve got to be really close. And it’s only really noticeable on the doors, not the frames or drawers. I think it also helps that we went with a semi-gloss finish and not a gloss finish paint.
This was a concern for us too before we painted. We looked into using some sort of roll-on filler to ‘fill in’ the grain but decided against it just bc we weren’t really that turned off by the possibility of grain showing. However, if you ARE wincing at the possibility of grain showing through, maybe you’d want to go with the filler. I can’t say I wasn’t a little nervous when we first started priming over the oak but now that we’re done, I wish we would have done it sooner. I am 100% satisfied with the results we got for the amount of $$ we put into it!
Chris – when we were thinking about using a filler to hide the grain it was a product called Brushing Putty from Fine Paints of Europe. It’s quite a bit more work, but some people have used it with great results.
http://www.finepaintsofeurope.com/brushing_putty.aspx
Just wanted to drop by and thank you again for using me on this little painting project. Your job came in handy during what is typically a slow time of year, post holidays and all, although business has picked up a good bit since then.
And for anyone considering doing your own cabinets, keep in mind that although these do-it-yourselfers took a good bit of this project on themselves (which saved them a fair amount of money), you can always hire someone such as myself to take care of everything from A-Z.
Thanks again, Dana and Steve, for using me on this painting project that obviously improved your home a great deal. It was truly a pleasure. Of course all referrals are certainly appreciated, and anyone interested in having me help them out with their next project can reach me directly at 937 559 8167 or justice.dj@gmail.com.
Enjoy! -DJ
Handy Hubby and Housetweaking Hottie –
Sorry Steve, I needed a noun that began with ‘H’. It was just the first thing to pop in my head.
Anyways, thanks for the additional information. I trust your opinion on the paint job without the filler although thanks for providing the link to the information, I’m not sure I want to take the chance with that. I may buy the smaller can and try it on a piece of one of the cabinets. I am going to remove the panel out of 2 of the doors and put glass in them. I might do that first and try the grain filler in the panels that I remove. I’m thinking that regardless of whether the grain is there, I will like seeing a little bit of grain in the wood a lot more than I will like looking at the ugly golden oak cabinets. We’ll see how the test pieces go. I’ll post some reviews of the test pieces after I finish them.
Good luck with the rest of the kitchen remodel. Looking forward to seeing the pictures. Are you guys looking at granite slabs? There is a company called Granite Transformations that uses thin slabs of granite and creates a layer of granite over your existing countertop. My explanation is not doing it justice. You can tell the difference but for the price difference, I think it may be worth it. We are going to look into it some more when we look at doing our countertops.
Thanks again! I may give DJ a call if I decide not to do it myself but I’ll probably take it on pretty soon.
-Roscoe
Roscoe!
I’m in the middle of replacing a panel on one of the doors with glass right now. I’ll take some pics and we can post how that project goes. If you beat us to it, let us know how it turned out.
As for the countertops, we’re looking mainly at granite. I’ve heard of Granite Transformations but didn’t really know what they did. Sounds like a decent less expensive option. We’ll definately check it out.
Your cabinets are beautiful! Such an inspiration…I’m going to paint ours aas soon as the weather warms up a bit so we can sand and paint outside. What color are your kitchen walls? They’re beautiful, esp with the white cabinets, they really make the color pop.
Erica – The walls are Valspar (Lowe’s) Bonsai color swatch but we had it mixed at Sherwin Williams in their NO VOC eggshell finish. And even though you didn’t ask… our cabinets are Sherwin Williams Greek Villa. We didn’t realize how many whites were out there to choose from until we started looking! Happy painting! Take before/after pics if you remember and send ‘em my way. I love a good before and after.
It looks amazing! Thanks for sharing the link Dana. You guys (of course) did a fabulous job. And the budget is amazing of course.
xo,
s (& j)
Great job painting your cabinets! We painted our old 70’s cheap wood cabinets 3 years ago a sage green (walls are butter cream…all latex) and what a difference it made…even made the old 30 year old gray speckled laminate countertop look good! We replaced the hinges & pulls/handles as well to silver and laid laminate knotty pine on the floor (had commercial carpeting glued down…ewwww). We put 2 coats of poly over our paint & they have held up extremely well (I do touch them up occasionally where the fingers are always rubbing at certain spots by pulls)…did you think of putting poly on yours as well or is the acrylic paint tough enough to withstand every day abuse? Thanks!
Sherry – Um, I am totally giddy that you read this AND made a comment! The painting of the kitchen cabinets never would have happened without your inspiration!
Steph – We have two young boys (both under 5yrs) that test our kitchen paint job every day. Happy to say that it has held up well. We did not use polyurethane but the white latex paint we used is enamel, so it has a much more durable surface than plain latex paint. It requires a longer curing (drying) time after painting, but we knew we’d need it. I will probably take one day each year to touch-up scuffs but I’m okay with that. These cabinets are gonna be around for a while! The only thing we would change was painting them earlier!!!!
Thanks so much Dana and Steve, this is super inspirational. We are moving into a house at the end of April and the entire house is oak… oak kitchen cabinets, oak bathroom cabinets, oak trim, hollow oak doors, oak baseboard and oak crown molding- YUCK! Not to mention a two-story entry way… all OAK… oh, and also oak-colored hardwood.
When we made the offer on the house my intention was to paint all that oak white but everyone I have talked to about looks at me like I am crazy (except my sweet husband who stands by me and says that all the oak is ugly). I am nervous to take on the project but our first fix would be painting the kitchen cabinets white – I have to say, the more and more people that are cropping up that have done this gives me ease. My main worry is the oak grain showing through, how many times did you sand? Just the once at the beginning? I have read a few instructions on the internet that have recommended once and then between priming and painting and that seems like so much work. I just don’t want the grain to be noticeable (but if it ended up like yours when you can only see it up close and in the light I would be more than satisfied).
How many coats of primer and then paint did DJ do? Any info is helpful, and again thanks so much for sharing – your kitchen looks 100x better! I can’t believe that dads and grandpas are so puzzled by us people that just want a fresh and airy kitchen! I mean look at that difference!
Heathyr – Even though we were both totally on board for painting our oak, I can’t say I wasn’t a teeny-weeny bit shocked that we were actually going to do it. That first stroke of primer was like “OK, there’s no turning back now!” But, honestly, even after only being primed, those cabinets were looking a million times better!
As for our specific technique, we cleaned, deglossed and sanded everything then dusted off again. We used one coat of OIL-BASED primer tinted to our topcoat color (Sherwin Williams Greek Villa). We did LIGHTLY SAND between priming and our first coat of paint. We used a LATEX ENAMEL in a semi-gloss finish for a durable topcoat. Two coats of latex enamel were required with SANDING BETWEEN EACH COAT and light dusting with a damp towel. This may sound like a lot of sanding, but really it’s not that bad…it wasn’t like we made sure each and every square inch was perfectly sanded…we just lightly rubbed our sanding blocks across the surface in a circular motion (like shining windows). We were more concerned with paint strokes showing up but that did not happen.
As far as the grain is concerned, I think going with a SEMI-GLOSS LATEX ENAMEL topcoat is the way to avoid this best. Semi-gloss is easy to clean yet not so shiny that it shows the grain – I wouldn’t recommend gloss finishes if you’re worried about the grain showing. Again, our grain is faintly noticeable: only up close with overhead lights shining down on them and your head tilted at just the right angle. They really have a soft look to them not grainy at all.
Hope all the info helps! I’d be glad to answer any other questions that may arise. Good luck and happy painting. You will be so glad you paint that oak! And don’t think too much about what others say – if you and your husband agree that the oak orange has to go than so be it. You’re the ones that have to live there and it’s not as if you’re saying everyone should paint their oak…it’s just your preference. Believe me, we got a lot of ‘looks’ too!
Thanks for share, please keep us posting about this info. I’d like to read it more.
Holandia – We are upgrading our countertops in the near, NEAR future so stay tuned for that! I’ll be sure to post. I also have plans for changing the look of our black appliances without actually ‘upgrading’ them…
What an awesome change! Your kitchen is beautiful. I’d love to find someone like DJ to help paint our kitchen in Baltimore! How did you find him- friends, craigslist? I am always a little leery of craigslist.
thanks!