Can Stained Kitchen Cabinets Be Painted?

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If you've arrived at this page, you probably have stained kitchen cabinets that are no longer appealing to you. Perhaps the color is not quite your style anymore or you just purchased a home and the cabinets, while in good condition, are a bit dated. Your kitchen cabinets can be painted. The goal, though, is to paint your kitchen cabinets in a way so that they do not look painted. We've repainted a lot of kitchen cabinets and all of our customers tell us, "These are really beautiful cabinets, but I don't like the color. So we want to paint the cabinets. But I don't want the cabinets to look like we painted them."

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And it's clear what these homeowners mean. We've all seen a cabinet paint job where it is clear that the cabinets have been painted. There are unsightly brush strokes, heavy roller stipple, drips, misses, and the list goes on. No one wants that. Not you.. Not us. So our goal when painting kitchen cabinets is to do so in such a way that the cabinets look like they were purchased painted, from a factory, and installed in your home. We're talking spray-finished, painted cabinets.

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So when we talk about painting kitchen cabinets, or painting bathroom vanities, or even painting furniture for that matter, we're really talking about refinishing them with paint. 

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What's The Process for Refinishing Kitchen Cabinets with Paint

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The first step in refinishing kitchen cabinets with paint is site protection. Site protection involves setting up a runway from the front door through to the kitchen to protect the floor as our painters walk into and out of the home with tools, equipment, primers, and paint. 

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Once the runway is installed, the next step in refinishing your kitchen cabinets is to remove all of the cabinets doors and hardware. Each hinge and doo gets numbers and stored so that they can be reinstalled in the exact location and position as when they were removed. After the doors and hardware are removed, the next step is to seal off the work area from the rest of the home to prepare for dust and paint containment and evacuation.

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Dust containment and evacuation involves lots of tape, plastic, and HEPA air scrubber machines set up to create negative air flow from the rest of the home into the kitchen, with the kitchen air being pulled through the HEPA air scrubber, catching the dust in the HEPA filter and the fumes in a charcoal filter, and pushing the air out of the home through a duct running out of an egress door or window. 

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Once that dust extraction and containment system is in place, the kitchen cabinets are sealed off from the adjacent surfaces with tape, dust and paint control plastic, and paper. This sealing off involves covering the countertops, appliances, floors, fixtures, backsplash, and any other surface in the kitchen not to be painted. This masking procedure is much like an automotive detailer covering portions of a car during re-painting. It is a painstaking, but absolutely necessary process that cannot be shortcut if the final product is to be factory-finished but without damage to the non-cabinet portions of the kitchen. 

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After the site protection is completed, it's time to start working on the cabinets. 

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What Process is Used to Prepare the Cabinets and Doors for Refinishing with Paint

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Before we talk about how the doors and cabinets are prepared for refinishing with paint, there is one question to be answered: should the doors be refinished off-site or on-site? And the answer to that question depends on the residential painter you hire to refinish your cabinets. We have refinished cabinets with paint both on site and off site. So we are comfortable with both scenarios.

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Should The Cabinet Doors Be Refinished On-Site or Off-Site

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When we refinish cabinets with paint on-site, we set up drying racks inside your home, usually in the kitchen or an adjacent eat in area, and actually paint the doors at the same time that the cabinet doors are painted. It can get crowded, but we're used to it. The benefit of refinishing the cabinets doors on site at the same time as the rest of the cabinets is that you get your kitchen back and in working order much quicker--usually in 5 days. 

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On the other hand, sometimes a home simply does not offer the space to set up a spray area and a drying rack within the home. We have very space saving, efficient ways of setting up our spray area, but it still requires a fair amount of space. In those circumstances, we take the cabinet doors off site and refinish them with paint in our shop's dust-controlled spray booth. This process take a bit more time because the doors have to dry and cure completely before we can transport them back to the kitchen to be reinstalled. And they have to be bubble wrapped after painting and then unwrapped to be installed. It's a major process that takes time. It adds about 2 weeks to the total time to refinish your kitchen cabinets. That is, 1 week to refinish the cabinet boxes in the kitchen and then an additional 2 weeks to refinish the doors offsite before the doors get reinstalled, for a total process time of 3 weeks. 

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Generally, if space in your home allows for it, unless your painter has a preference to remove them and refinish the doors off-site, we suggest refinishing your doors on-site in your home. 

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The Cabinet Refinishing Process

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Whether the doors are refinished with paint on-site in your home or off-site in a dust-controlled spray booth at your painter's shop, the process for preparing and refinishing your cabinets is the same. 

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Clean the Cabinets Before Refinishing Them With Paint

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Every square inch of the cabinet boxes and the doors on both sides must be cleaned with a mild, degreasing detergent and wiped clean with fresh water. Degreasing with soap and water ensure that any dirt or grease is removed prior to sanding, so that no dirt or grime gets pressed into the wood, which would inhibit the primer and paint from adhering to the cabinets. 

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Sand the Cabinets Before Refinishing Them with Paint

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Once cleaned, the cabinets and doors must be sanded multiple time. The initial sanding should be with a fairly course grit sandpaper, for example 100 or 120. Professional residential painters will use vacuum-equipped sanders that contain and extract dust to prevent the dust from migrating into the rest of your home and to keep it from entering the air and getting into the paint

finish. 

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Vacuum and Wipe Clean the Cabinets Before Refinishing Them with Paint

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After the cabinets and doors are sanded, they must be vacuumed and cleaned with a clean cloth, or preferably a tack cloth to remove excess dust not collected by the vacuum.

 

Prime the Cabinets (Maybe Twice) Before Refinishing Them with Paint

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Once that is done, the doors are ready for the first coat of primer. This first coat of primer is typically a bonding primer that is intended to form the connecting coat between the next resurfacing coat of primer and the cabinet surface. The binding primer generally requires 24 hours of dry time between coats to allow it to bond tenaciously with the cabinet substrate. 

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After the bonding primer is applied and dried for the requisite number of hours, the next coat to be applied is the surfacing primer coat. This primer coat is typically a higher build, imperfection masking coat that attaches strongly to the binding primer and is intended to sand to a powdery smooth finish for the finish coats. This coat is optional and not necessary if your budget doesn't allow for the additional coat and sanding. However, the finish is far smoother and finer than if this coat is skipped, so if your budget allows for it, this coat is highly recommended. 

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Sand the Cabinets Again Before Refinishing Them with Paint

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Once the bonding primer and maybe the surfacing primer are applied and dried completely, the cabinets and doors must be sanded again. Except this time, the sanding is no intended to remove any finish, it is only for the purpose of smoothing out the primer to make the surface of the cabinets and doors like glass. The grit here will be very fine, like a 400 grit sandpaper. Again, this is done with a sander attached to a vacuum with a HEPA filter to contain and extract sanding dust. 

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Vacuum and Tack the Cabinets and Doors Again Before Refinishing Them with Paint

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One more time, get out the vacuum and tack cloth and clean any remaining dust that the vacuum may not have collected. 

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Apply The Finish Coats to The Cabinets

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It is finally time to apply the finish coats to the cabinets and doors. For the finish coats, there are really two options available if you are interested in factory-finished cabinets that will dry hard and stand up to regular kitchen use: Benjamin Moore's Advance--$59.99/gallon and Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel--$94.99/gallon. 

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Advance is a great product. It dries hard, it looks amazing, and you will definitely get a factory-finished look from this paint. It does have some drawbacks. The recoat time is 16 hours, which is long when sometimes you may want to apply 2 coats of finish in the same day--one in the morning and one at the end of the day. It is also a waterborne resin based paint. The science behind waterborne resins is a trade secret mystery, but there is something missing in a waterborne resin that is not missing in an acrylic resin or urethane resin based paint.

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Because of that, Sherwin William Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel is our go-to paint for refinishing cabinets, painting furniture, painting front doors, and for painting molding, built-ins, and millwork. It has all of the benefits and appearance of Advance, has a 4-hour dry time, and has a urethane resin which creates a hard exterior enamel shell for the cabinets when fully cured. 

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Reinstall the Cabinet Doors

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After the cabinets and doors have had an opportunity to dry, at least overnight, the doors can be carefully reinstalled. Once they are reinstalled, the doors and cabinets should be treated gingerly for up to 30 days as they fully cure. They'll be dry within 4 to 6 hours after they're painted but the underlayers will still be hardening. During this 30 day period, the doors and cabinets should not be washed or wet, otherwise it could compromise the finish and durability of the coating system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How to Hire Residential Painters to Refinish Kitchen Cabinets with Paint

 

If you are considering refinishing your kitchen cabinets, we'd love to help you with that project. You can schedule an online painting estimate here, or contact us by email here. 

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