With the heavy use they receive almost every day, kitchen cabinets can begin to look beat up and worn out. Added to this, even the highest-end cabinets start to look dated after enough time has passed. Cabinet painting is a wonderful, popular way to bring new life to your kitchen without needing a complete renovation. Is kitchen cabinet painting a DIY project? Is it a good idea to try painting those cabinets yourself?

If your level of painting experience is extensive, you have excellent painting tools, and you have a lot of time to devote to the project, then absolutely! Kitchen cabinet painting is not just for experts, and if you follow correct procedures, you can end up with wonderful results.

For those with a more basic set of house painting skills and tools, you may want to leave the cabinet painting to a professional. There are several ways in which improper steps can end up leaving you worse off than before you started.

Improper Surface Preparation

The way you begin the cabinet painting process needs to be shaped by the current coating on your cabinets. If they are already painted, there will need to be a de-glossing process so that the new paint will adhere well. In the case of stained cabinets, the finish must be stripped for the same reason. Other types of kitchen cabinets are actually coated with a heat-shrink wrapping, which requires an entirely different preparation.

No matter what type of coating you are dealing with, the surface preparation stage is vitally important to avoid disaster, and in every case, it is a labor-intensive process. It can involve a lot of sanding and/or chemical strippers.

Once the prior coating has been properly treated, a layer of primer is generally needed, creating a suitable surface for the new paint to cling to.

Incorrect Materials and Tools

Because kitchen cabinets are such a high-traffic item, they require specific types of paint that will resist wear and scrubbing. Using the wrong type of primer for your prior coat, the wrong type of interior paint, or an incorrect finishing coat will lead to unsightly paint failure and costly remediation.

Additionally, the best results in cabinet painting are achieved with spray equipment. This provides a factory-smooth finish. If you don't have this equipment, you will probably end up with brush marks and unevenness to the finish. We don't tend to notice this on walls, but on kitchen cabinets, it really shows up. And if you do attempt using spray equipment without the necessary training and experience, you are likely to end up with splatters and runs.

Insufficient Time

Have you ever launched into a project with a lot of enthusiasm, only to get bogged down and worn out by a process that takes longer than you had expected? When it comes to painting kitchen cabinets, many homeowners have done exactly that. Consider the time involved in the following process:

• Remove all cabinet and drawer hardware
• Remove all doors and drawer faces from cabinets
• Protect all nearby surfaces with tape and plastic
• Prepare all surfaces
• Prime all surfaces
• Paint all surfaces with multiple coats
• Apply a finish coat
• Clean up
• Reinstall the doors, drawer faces, and hardware

Most of us attempting to do this on our own would end up getting about halfway into the project, then living with an unfinished kitchen for months while we chip away at the rest of it.

Williams Professional Painting

For most homeowners, the better solution is to hire a professional house painting company to paint our kitchen cabinets for us. This gives you peace of mind, knowing that every step will be performed correctly, and you will have great results. Additionally, it saves you untold time, energy, and frustration, compared to attempting the job yourself.

Williams Professional Painting has been serving the Washington, D.C. region since 1979, offering a full range of interior and exterior painting services. We emphasize quality craftsmanship and attentive customer service in every project we undertake, earning a reputation for excellence that can't be beat!

Request your free estimate today, whether you need cabinet painting, carpentry, molding installation, interior painting, popcorn ceiling removal, or whatever your project might be!