Painting Kitchen Cabinets

Painted kitchen cabinets are making a comeback as can be seen by the many colors of cabinets now being made available by top-line cabinet manufacturers like Thomasville and KraftMaid.  Quite often you can give your kitchen a bright, new look for a fraction of the cost of replacing your kitchen cabinets.  I recently ran across this article by a do-it-yourselfer who has transformed her kitchen into a beautiful and inviting place.

A lot of people are getting tired of their oak cabinets that make their kitchens look dark.  Oak poses a challenge for painting due to its deep grain.  Most cabinets newer than the 1960’s are not solid wood and can’t be sanded down smooth so oak cabinets need to have the grain filled in and then smoothed down before spray painting.  But compared to replacing cabinets it’s well worth the effort in order to save thousands of dollars.

Keep in mind your door hinges, unless they’re the newer European style that are hidden from view, will be dark and show up a lot more than they do on dark oak.  It could be difficult to find lighter colored hinges that mount the same way as the ones that you have now so unless you are OK with dark hinges you may end up having to retrofit European style hinges which require routing out recess holes in the door frames.

The nice thing about painting your cabinets is you can mix and match colors: a light color for the cabinets along your walls and a dark color for your island.  I’ve even seen the doors and drawer fronts painted one color and the frames painted another color for a dramatic two-tone effect.  Browse through the manufacturer catalogues and brochures at Lowes or The Home Depot for ideas as well as see door samples of painted cabinet doors for inspiration.