I’m not sure that there’s a more hotly debated topic in DIY circles than painting kitchen cabinets. And in some cases, I think it’s justified if it’s a real old beat-up crappy material sort of cabinet. A new paint job can be something that saves that material from the landfill. I did this in my mom’s condo in the past. I love the results. She still loves the results, and I stand by it being a good solution in some cases. Some people love it.

Some people hate it and I’m not here to tell you what’s right and wrong. Hey, it’s your cabinets. Do whatever the heck you want with them. But if you’re going to paint them, I do encourage you to do a good job, do some research, get the right tools because otherwise you just have problems and it looks like doody. So that’s the situation we have here. These are doody cabinets, and I am tasked with the challenge of trying to fix them and spruce them up. So, this house is about to hit the market, and we just want to make sure it looks better.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of flaws. Now, the budget is very low. I can’t do a lot here. I just have to do the best I can and try to get a new finish and spruce up what I see. Fix some of the problems and it presentable to potential buyers. So let me show you the flaws that I see and then give you some tips on how we can make them a little bit better. Oh, and a quick caveat. I just want to say I’m not a professional painter. I’m a woodworker and I know mostly clear finishes. So, when I do paint, if you’re a professional painter, you might critique what I’m doing. That’s perfectly fine. I’m just doing someone a favor here and I’m doing the best I can. And because these were just regular wood cabinets when they were first installed, some of the gaps here are forgivable when it’s just a wood finish against the wood finish.

A gap is not quite as noticeable if it’s just a little hairline. But when you paint it and you get some paint up in there, your kind of goober it up and it doesn’t look good because now gaps appear as black lines, especially when you have a white paint job like this. So, we do have some caulking to do to make sure that we get rid of those lines and just make them disappear if possible. Because the doors were painted in place, we have a lot of excess paint where someone tried to get the brush onto the edge of the door and then we wound up with a bunch of goobers here that we’re going to have to sand down and clean up.

And once again, because the doors were not removed, we have areas where the hinges lived that just didn’t get any paint, so you got some holidays there. And that highlights one of the most important tips I can give. You don’t be lazy about it. Just take the doors off. It’s not that hard. Get a screwdriver, remove the hinges, remove the hardware and you’re going to have a much better time, a much easier time and the results are going to be a lot better. All right. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re removing all the doors. I’m numbering them. It should be obvious where they go. But just in case we’re putting a little bit of blue tape on the back of the door, we’re putting a number on it and I just go in sequential order as we go across, we’ll do the same thing when we do the bottoms later.

This way we just keep everything straight.

And one of the first things I’m going to do is go around and caulk because I want some time for that caulk to dry before we start doing some spot treatment on the paint job. One thing I will say is the cabinet, face frames in a case like this where budget is low and we’re trying to get this done as fast as possible. We don’t necessarily have to do a lot of work on the face frames. We’re going to get rid of the flaws and we’re going to apply paint probably with a roller or a brush just to make sure that’s done because most of the face frames are covered by the doors. The doors are where we’re going to give it a little bit more extra love and attention. So we’re just kind of compromising here to get the best results possible and the most bang for the buck.

Now, hopefully you can make this out, but look at the edge of this door. It’s just a bunch of built up paint on there. So we’re going to take these doors outside, get them sanded up a little bit. We’re not removing all the paint, but we do want to level it out as much as we can.

So, Jay’s got the door out here. The first step is to hit all the flat sections. Again, we’re not going for a complete strip here. We just want to knock down the texture. A lot of this paint job was probably done with a roller, probably one with a very heavy nap on it. So, we have so much of this orange peel kind of texture. We’re going to try to knock some of that down. So, we’re going to hit it with a random orbit sander with about 180 grits, hit all those flats. Now, we’re not going to get perfection in here on the moldings. We’re just going to do the best we can with some hand sanding and a sanding block, whatever we can to just smooth it out a little bit.

So, you might be able to see here with the light coming across this way that we’ve knocked down a lot of those high spots. So it’s a little bit of a mottled look to it, but that’s what we’re going for. We just want to smooth it out and if we hit a couple of bare spots, that’s totally fine. We’re going to paint over that, but you can kind of see what we’re going for here and I hate to use the phrase quick and dirty because that implies low quality, but we are doing something that’s a little bit quick and dirty here just trying to get the job done in a short time frame and on a low budget and you can see how much we had to sand the edge just to get that clumpy crap off of there.

Now, oddly enough, the insides of these doors are in better shape than the outside.

Also, the fact that it’s the inside. So we’re going to make an executive decision to not worry about the insides today. We’re just focused on the outside. Now of course, there’s a lot of dust on the surface. So Jay is going to hit it with a vac. And the final step is to take a lightly dampened rag or paper towel, not wet. We don’t want it to be soaked. We just want it slightly damp and that’s going to pull any remaining dust off of the surface and get us ready for that paint. Now, inside, I’m going to tackle some of these areas with these high spots of accumulated paint and I’m going to use my random orbit sander.

Same grit we were using outside. There’s a lot here. Just a word of caution. Random orbit sanders can remove material very aggressively. So, you just want to be a little bit careful with how you use it and how much pressure you apply. Well, sorry to interrupt your video, but I got to tell you guys something really important. Do you know that we have t-shirts like this one? They’re pretty awesome and they come in in a wide variety of exotic colors like black and also black.

So, if you’re interested head to taw store dot com, pick up a new t-shirt. We appreciate the support as always. And let’s get back to that video. All right. Next, we’re going to use a little bit of caulk, and you want to be careful with the way that you size the tip here. We don’t have big gaps. So, I really don’t want to make a huge wide opening on this. I want something that’s fairly fine and that I could easily control…get that little lip up there and that should do the trick. Now, I know there’s a number of you who are going to be really disappointed that I didn’t do any sort of caulk jokes because I’m using caulk and it sounds like another word. But, you know, over the years been doing this for a long time, I’ve matured quite a bit. You’re just going to have to get over it. Look. No caulk jokes. Now, caulks come in all different sizes and shapes. It doesn’t really matter whether you have a big one or a small one.

It’s really a matter of how you use it.

Correct placement, right. Uh So we’re going to put that right in the crack here. Here we go. Just like that. Now, if you’re a little sloppy with your caulk, you can come back with a wet rag and just wipe it clean along the line and that should improve the look a little bit and don’t be afraid to use your bare hands with your caulk. You get a better feel for what’s going on. Now, even if you only have a short portion to do here, it’s not a bad idea if you have a full line there to take a bead down the whole line and just even the look out just so it’s a little more consistent and then maybe go a little heavier when you actually do have a gap and skim over the parts where you don’t and that just gives you nice consistent coverage all the way down.

Now up here where we have this build-up of crown definitely needs a little bit of help. I know caulk just kind of has a bad reputation because it covers up problems, you know, in the fit and finish. But this stuff was never caulked in the first place, and these gaps are just crazy. So, here’s what it looks like before and there’s the after, I mean, when it comes to these gaps, it’s really what you don’t see that makes the big difference if you notice it, that’s usually an indicator of a problem. So now I’ve caulked everywhere I need to, and I’ve also hit the surfaces that I plan to paint with a little bit of sandpaper. So, this is a kitchen that’s been used, which means there could be grease, there could be oil and then ultimately paint just kind of binds better to a surface that’s got a little bit of a tooth to it. A mechanical tooth. So, hitting it with a little bit of sandpaper is a good idea.

So, the 180 or 220 I’m not really painting the entire thing at this point. So that goes in what paint I’m going to use here. I did buy new paint for the doors because I’m redoing all of them and we’re going to do that with a spray, but for the face frames and everything that’s up here, I’m going to use the original paint so that it blends perfectly with the areas that I am not touching at this point. And thankfully, I do have a supply of that paint. Of course, we’re going to use a good quality brush to do this.

You could also use a roller; just make sure it’s a nice fine roller that leaves a smooth finish. If you use like a big thick nap roller, one that you might use on a textured wall. Well, it leaves texture and you wind up with what we already have on these cabinets, which is a gross textured surface. So, we’ll do something a little better than that. Now, even though paint covers grain, I usually try to follow, you know, going with the grain as sort of a rule. So, when you have a stile like this of our face frame, it goes all the way down and then meets with this portion which is a rail so I can take a brush stroke all the way down to this point. And I can imagine there being a line and then later, if I wanted to hit this rail, I would hit that going in this direction. So, to me, it just kind of makes sense. And of course, here we had to sand a little more aggressively.

So it may take a number of coats to get that to look decent. But at this point, I’m just going to make sure we have good coverage across the whole thing. And when I’m painting a section, I’m really going to make an effort here to do the entire length of the piece. I really don’t want to start and stop line on a single piece if I can avoid it. So right now, I’m just trying to get good coverage and make sure we have paint across the whole surface. See if I need to go sideways to get some areas like that. That’s ok. It’s just the final passes that really matter the most. And once I have the coverage, I want nice spread here, then I’m going to take one last pass. I believe it’s called tipping where I’m just going to make a nice light run all the way down in one motion that should help decrease the lines that we see in our brush strokes.

And we will definitely need another coat on that side there. Of course, any areas like here where we had our hinges that were completely missed it a little bit dusty. You do want to vacuum, try to get all that dust off of there. We’re just going to touch that part up too. The hinge does cover it, but you know, she was doing a nice job.

All right. So, while that dries, we’re going to head outside, get the HV LP set up and see if we can get the rest of the doors done. Now to apply the paint to our doors, we’re going to use HVLP. Now, this might be intimidating if you’re not familiar with this, you could certainly use a brush or a roller or whatever you need to do. But I think best results really come from spraying, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with applying by hand and spray systems are actually not that expensive these days. You don’t need a big compressor. You just need a turbine. They’re self-contained. So, you basically have a hose, a gun and then the unit here that creates all of the air.

So, you can get these for like 100 bucks and it’s actually well worth it for something like this because you can go very quickly and you get a nice, smooth even finish. So, we’re just going to load up the paint into the cup here. A couple other things. If the paint is really, really thick, you can dilute a little bit. If its water based, you could dilute with water or you can use a product called folderol, which is actually probably a little bit better. You also want to use a paint filter. I have those back at the shop. I don’t have them here and this is a sort of run and gun pun intended, run and gun process. We’re just dumping it and if I need to dilute, I’ll dilute with a little bit of water, and we’ll hope for the best. But those filters are good for getting any of the solidified chunks out of there and just to ensure a more even coat of material. So, let’s get some of this into the cup.

This is, this is where someone’s going to chime in. Didn’t you know that if you put a nail in your foot, you stand on your right leg and bounce three times, this goes a lot better. I’m just doing what I can people. Relax. Look at that like a pro and I didn’t even have to watch a TikTok video. I watch my own videos to learn how to do things. All right, I’m going to add a little bit of water here, not coffee. And then I’m going to mix it with my patented mixing stick. Boy, this won’t bother anybody, will it? Everyone’s going to love this. Now, there are ways to judge the viscosity of finishes and paints like this proper ways to do it. Sometimes you could just kind of look at with experience, look at the thickness of the material and make a quick judgment call. Clearly, clearly, not getting too scientific about it today.

You’ve done good stick. All right.

So I’m just going to put my doors down on some bench cookies there just to raise them up off the surface, go around, hit my perimeter. Oh By the way, you do have a lot of settings on these spray guns. And these things generally have several adjustments on them for the fan size, the amount of fluid that’s coming out, going to work out the pattern here on my tarp real quick and then I’m going to start to spray and just make sure I have decent coverage over the whole thing and around my edges. So we’re going to be as efficient as possible with this paint because I really don’t want to go buy more. I’m also wearing a respirator.

That’s always a good idea. All right. So it’s a little bit chilly outside. It’s also windy. So what we were able to do is get some cardboard, lay our doors out inside so that they can dry where it’s nice and warm and there aren’t any bugs.

And then by the time everything sets up here, then we can start to hang the doors back on the cabinets. Unfortunately, there was a showing happening that day and we needed to scramble to get the doors back on the cabinet. So there’s no footage of that. But here’s the final look. Now, it’s not perfect, but it’s definitely better.

And that’s what we’re going for. And here are some drawers that we didn’t have time to do. So you can see the old finish and compare that to the top drawer, which is the new finish. It’s a big difference. So, we’re going to do the best we can to spruce up these cabinets, make them look good.

So that when a buyer comes in, they are not going to throw up when they see the cabinets. Now to apply the finish… it’s not finish…paint.

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