DIY kitchen cabinet transformation

When we bought our house, we knew we had to do something with the kitchen cabinets.  As much as we were completely dreading doing it, we knew it just needed to be done.

I had people requested what we used to transform our kitchen cabinets so here’s a blog post for you on the process!

1)  Remove the cabinet doors of the upper cabinets.  Since we were painting the upper cabinets white and the lower cabinets/drawers black, we decided to paint the upper & lower cabinets separately.

2) Degloss the cabinet doors and the side/fronts of the cabinet body.  We used Klean Strip for this process.  Note:  We did not feel we needed to sand the cabinets.

3) Set up a station in the garage.  Prime the front and back of the cabinet doors using Sherwin Williams – Multipurpose Primer.  After applying a coat, let dry completely.  Blaine applied a total of 3 coats primer on each side.  What worked best for Blaine was using the small rollers.  It was a big deal for the kids to help again for this project.

Dylan helped paint too.

4) After priming, time to use the Sherwin Williams – ProClassic extra white paint.  Let dry completely.  Then apply another coat.  Blaine applied a total of 3 coats of paint.  This paint was amazing.  It’s a self leveling paint so you don’t see streaks!!  The primer and paint for this project is what we used for our trim and doors  (check out previous blog post HERE).

5)  Put cabinet doors back on upper cabinets.

6)  Start on the lower cabinets/drawers!  Do the same process as upper cabinets:  Degloss..Prime..Paint.  We had trouble with the black paint.  It was a mess.  We originally bought Dutch Boy – Satin Platinum.  Blaine actually even painted the cabinet/drawer fronts with it.  For this specific project, we hated it.  It was runny, took forever to dry, and left very noticeable  streak marks.  🙁  To try to fix it, Blaine went back to Sherwin Williams.  Unfortunately, the self leveling ProClassic paint we used for the upper cabinets doesn’t come in BLACK!  Darn!  Blaine then bought the next best thing which was Sherwin Williams – Surface Enamel Latex Satin and had to REPAINT.  What a difference it made!

Note:  I will point out my one complaint.  Since we didn’t use a self leveling paint for the black cabinets, I can see some streaks on the side of our kitchen island depending on if the light hits it just right.  Overall though, I’m very happy with them!

Below is a BEFORE/AFTER.  (this pic was taken before we added cabinet hardware)

7)  We purchased hardware from Home Depot.  We went with Martha Stewart – 1 in hardware for the cabinet doors and Martha Stewart – 5 in hardware for the drawers.  What worked like a charm was this template that I bought with it.  The only thing we had to figure out was where the center of each drawer/cabinet was.

Check out the video for hardware installation!

Here you have it!  What a difference it has made in our “builder grade to modern home!”  Watch out for future posts on more of our house updates.