From a Friend…

“I never realized how much work goes into repainting kitchen cabinets until I tried to do it myself. The key word here is tried. Here’s the process of what I went through.

Finding out whether the material of my cabinets could be painted

Who knew that not all cabinet materials work well with paint? I sure didn’t. I went to Home Depot to to find the paint color I wanted and started talking to one of the paint guys there. I told him that I was repainting my kitchen cabinets myself, and I needed to find the right paint color. The first thing he asked is what material my cabinets were. I had no idea – aren’t they all wood? No they are not. Cabinets come in all kinds of materials: wood, wood-laminate, metal, plastic laminate. I found out that plastic laminate can be difficult to get the paint to bond with the cabinets. So before spending a whole lot of money on paint, I had to go home and figure out what material my cabinets were. Of course they were plastic laminate. I decided to give it a try anyway…unfortunately.

The cleaning alone takes a full day

Kitchens are greasy and there is a lot of hidden grease that I didn’t know about until I took apart my kitchen cabinets. It was in between all the detail of the cabinets, in the hinges, and in all the hard-to-reach back corners. I had my plan to clean and get the drawer and cabinet fronts painted in one day. Needless to say, I didn’t get that far. The cleaning took much longer than expected. So I was now without a functional kitchen and had barely started my DIY project.

I forgot about sanding

How could I forget about sanding?! Of course, I had already started painting the fronts of the drawers when I realized the paint wasn’t going on smooth. So I got started on sanding. I don’t have one of those fancy sanding machines so I had to do it all by hand. It took FOREVER. And my hands were killing me by the end of the day. So now 3 days had gone by and I hadn’t even started the painting. Not having a kitchen is a pain.

Applying the primer/sealer

This part wasn’t too bad except that it was very meticulous because it needed to be an even coat. Since I work a full-time job, I had to do this over the course of 3 days. Eating take-out is getting old and EXPENSIVE.

Ready to paint…sort of

It turns out, I have no idea how to paint. I used a natural synthetic paint brush because I didn’t want to pay 100 dollars a day to rent a paint sprayer. Not only did the paint brush take forever, there were streaks all over my cabinets. It looked anything but professional. I was so tired of dealing with this project that I didn’t care. I had been working on painting for 4 days now. This is what my cabinets were going to look like.

The peeling paint

I got up the next day to get ready to put my final top coat on. I went to go check on my cabinets and the paint was all bubbly and peeling. It didn’t bond to the plastic-laminate. I’d have to start all over.

How many times would this happen before I got it right? This failed project had already taken me a week and a half. I decided it wasn’t worth it to try again. I gave in and hired Sound Finish. In less than a week my kitchen was back together and looking beautiful.”

Interested in cabinet painting or refinishing but don’t have the time, patience, or skill to do it yourself? Contact Sound Finish today for a free quote!

Sound Finish Professional Cabinet Painting and Refinishing Services

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