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Preparing To Paint Cabinets-Kitchen Island Cabinet Painting Instructions

The following video gives all the steps necessary for preparing to paint a kitchen island cabinet. The reason they decided to remodel this island is because the added ornamental posts to the corners of the unit. The professional in this video obviously knows the necessary steps to produce an excellent end product.

Transcript: How to paint a kitchen cabinet, affordable creations, by Teresa Small
Hi there. I’m Teresa Small from Panama City Beach and today I’m at Jeff and Shirley’s house, some of my favorite clients. They have this lovely island area in their kitchen and they’ve added these ornamental corners on them. This is raw wood ornamental corners and it’s going to give a really beautiful elegant look.

What I’m going to do today is prepping it. I’ll take out all of the stuff off of it, sand the wood pieces that I’ve already painted in the past, clean them back up and start to put the coats of the new color on there. When it’s all finished, it should be very uniform and very pretty.



Anything worth doing is worth doing right. You want to take these cabinet doors completely off. Once you got them off, you may want to take the hinges off so they’re not on the cabinet and they’re not on the door. You’re going to take a really good degreaser like Dawn, dishwashing liquid, make hot salty water, take a rug and clean these cabinets, especially in the kitchen where they build up grease from people being in here, cooking and things like that. You want to clean all of those oils off of these cabinet doors and off of this cabinet. If you do not choose to do that step then you might have not done this project at all because your paint will not stay on the doors. Once you have cleaned them thoroughly and let them dry, then you’re going to come back and going to lightly sling every hinge. Sometimes, these are a little belligerent. You can hardly get these pocket hinges out of the door, especially when painted before because sometimes the paint gets down on the pocket if you don’t tape them up. I, also, have a pen and put a number on each one of these doors so I’ll know exactly where to put the door back. This one is door number two.

We’re done taking off the hinges. I also left the hinges on the side on the inside of the cabinet that goes with it because these are adjustable and you want them to go right back on the way that they came off on the same doors on the same room.

Once you got it all cleaned and rinsed off and you got a nice clean surface that you’re working with, you go back to the areas that are dry. You can buy these sanding blocks just about anywhere. You just want to gently sand over it in the direction of the grain. Don’t sit there and go against the grain and the rest. All you really want is to take the shine off of the old finish and create a tube and a finish that will hold on to the next coat of paint. These are great because they have a wedge on one side and you can turn them on the other side and work again on the groove and across the bottom here. Like I said, sand it on the direction of the grain.

After you have sand the face, you want to lay them out and put a coat on the inside of the door. So when you open the door, it will match what’s going on, on the outside. Some people do not bother to do the inside and that’s fine. You don’t have to. But then again, when you have guests over and you’re going to get something out of your cupboard, everyone’s going to see that you’re lazy doing this.

If you are smart and you have already painted your cabinet doors and the back side can be drying. Now, you’re barely here painting your cabinets. When you’re finished with this, the cabinet door should be dry enough that you can turn them over and do the faces of them. It works that good when you plan your time that way. Anything that’s raw wood, like these corners, are probably going to take an extra coat more than something that is already been painted before. She’d probably, pretty much, just go ahead and plan on that. There’s just no getting around it because it’s going to soak in. As a matter of fact, if this have a primer built into it, I would be putting a coat of primer on it first. Home Depot has a new paint out that has a primer built right in. How convenient is that? The things they come up with to make it easier for us. I normally use Benjamin more or Sherwin Williams when I’m doing my professional jobs. Their paints are high quality but they’re coming out with such wonderful items like this that even your normal city homemaker can go out and get an amazing product right down the street at their local Lowes or home-depot and go home and do a wonderful job. The thing that most people don’t come by rebelling and it’s the thing that keeps a lot of people from doing stuff like this is the lack of patience. It just takes so long to get the job done, right? Most people don’t have that kind of time anymore so they pay people like me to come in and do it because they’re busy running their businesses or working their career choice. So, I do a really wonderful job for them.

Before you put your second coat on, you can add a little bit of water, or in my case, I’ll put a little bit of flow troll with a little bit of water that is mixed in it to thin the paint out for the second coat. Just have it lay a little bit smoother and have a more professional look. You can get the flow troll at Humpty Doo or Lowes.

Do yourself a favor and put on some music that you like. It helps time to go faster. Also, make sure when you’re doing the last coats, do long strokes, come down and just do a whole bigger stroke all the way up. Don’t have those little strokes. Make beautiful long strokes. Get lost in your music and enjoy it.

It turned out wonderful. It’s all same color now. It turned out really pretty. A nice piece of furniture quality island there in the middle of their red kitchen.

Categories: Cabinet Resurfacing
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