The Process of Kitchen Cabinet Painting

When it comes to home design, the kitchen is arguably the most important focal point. Cabinets, appliances, and colour palette all help to set the tone and mood of a home’s interior design.  Changing that design can have a major impact on the fit and feel of your living space.

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to upgrade the feel of your entire home is by painting your kitchen cabinets.  To start, you’re saving materials and building costs by not having to pay for new cabinet construction and installation.  The price alone of painting your kitchen cabinets is a fraction of what it costs to replace (think five to seven thousand instead of 50 to 70 thousand).

Furthermore, virtually all kitchen and bath cabinets today are made from solid oak, maple, or high quality composite that will last for decades, and can last for a decade more with a professional and high-quality painted coating. In this article we will talk about the overall process behind painting a set of cabinets, the prep involved, the level of care and attention to detail needed for a professional finish, and the resulting product.  With the right tools and information, anyone can paint their cabinets.  But for this, we will get an idea of how the professionals tackle a set of cabinets and the steps needed to take to achieve the highest quality and best-looking finish. 

Preparing to Paint

The best paint job starts with the right preparation.  This is easily the most intensive, but also the most important, aspect of any painting project. 

Preparation for painted kitchen cabinets is essential to achieving that high quality, professional finish.  The prep phase starts by removing the cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and any other piece that can be taken off and re-installed.  For the highest quality finish, these pieces should be taken to a professional spray booth where they can be organized, cleaned, sanded, and then sprayed in an environmentally controlled space.

Once the kitchen or set of cabinets is dismantled of removable parts, any hardware such as door hinges and drawer slides can be taken off to prep the cabinet boxes. This is where a professional would use some combination of tape and paper/plastic covering to mask off the interior of the cabinet boxes, creating an edge up against the front-facing surface of the box that is receiving colour.

Once all the cabinet box interiors are masked off, the next phase is to cover up any remaining flooring, wall surfaces, countertops, backsplash, appliances, or any other surface that needs to be covered and protected from the paint.  Caulking is applied where appropriate and any non-paintable silicone is removed.  Removal of silicone is a critical step since no kind of paint will adhere to it and will be a point of failure.  We include ‘do you remove silicone’ as one of the questions you should ask when hiring a cabinet painter.

There are many tips and tricks that some professionals will have when it comes to their preference on prepping off a kitchen, but the general premise remains the same: clean lines, clean surfaces, and mask off anything and everything in the vicinity to protect from overspray. 

Paint Application

When a kitchen is being professionally painted with industrial sprayers, the amount of dust produced can be quite high.  This is why the prepping process should include using plastic covering to seal off any surrounding rooms or open areas that we don’t want to contaminate with overspray and dust.  As stated before, the prep is intensive but critical.  You are only finished the prep phase once you can be completely satisfied that no paint will end up where you don’t want it to.  Once this is achieved, the surfaces can be prepared to be painted.  For kitchens, this includes cleaning off any grease or food grime that may react with the primer.  Every surface is thoroughly sanded using a variety of power and hand sanders, dusted off and coated with two full coats of base primer.  In between the prime coats, every surface is checked over with a light and fixed as needed using caulking or wood fillers, all surfaces are thoroughly sanded and dusted again, followed by two full coats of colour.  The painting process itself occurs in a short amount of time compared to the prep needed, but the resulting finish is where the prep shines.  Smooth, sanded surfaces, clean lines, and a set of kitchen cabinets that look and feel brand new with a vibrant and colourful finish.  The high powered professional sprayers we use are critical in achieving the smooth, flawless finish that is associated with quality sprayed lacquer. 

Install and Finish

Depending on the product used, the turnaround time for sprayed finishes on cabinets can be relatively quick.  Sprayed lacquer is dry to the touch in about fifteen minutes, allowing us to check everything over thoroughly and remove the prep shortly after the spraying is complete.  A sprayed lacquer finish can take up to a month to fully cure, however it will not fade and is easily sanded meaning any future damage can be taken care of with ease when executed by an experienced technician. Once the kitchen space is de-prepped and cleaned, the doors and drawer fronts can be delivered back to the home from the shop, where they were fixed, sanded and painted in a controlled environment to ensure the absolute best finish. The doors are labelled to ensure they can be reinstalled in the correct positions, and voila! You are now in the presence of what looks to be brand-new kitchen cabinets, but with your original cabinets that have been completely revived and refinished.  The drastic change in colour, especially from dark stains to brighter shades, is noticed immediately.  A completely redesigned and modernized feel in the same home you had before, with just a new coat of paint.