Let’s Re-Paint the Kitchen Cabinets!

That’s right, I have re-painted my kitchen cabinets! If you’ve been here awhile, you already know that I just re-painted them in March of 2021. Yup, this was the 3rd time I’ve painted the cabinets. Why? you might ask. Well, the last time I painted them, the color was very intense! Not only was it intense – I love intense, dark colors – it was just a bit too intensely blue for my liking.

Newest color

Original cabinet color

In case you missed the kitchen cabinet painting saga, here is a recap. When we moved into the house, all the trim and wood were a light oak color. While I like light oak, it just didn’t look good with the warmer colors in my decor, paint, or the black & grey marbled look countertop in the kitchen. Over the years, I have been removing traces of the light oak. I have either painted, stained, or replaced it.

1st painted color – Olive

I decided to paint the cabinets after living in the house for about 10 years. I loved this olive, light green combination so much that it was 9 years before I considered updating the color.

2nd painted color – Teal blue

As I mentioned above, it took a little over 2 years of living with a color that I didn’t love before I decided to repaint the cabinets.

Step 1 – Prep

Before diving into painting, I did a little prep work. The first step was to use a damp microfiber cloth to wash down the cabinet doors & drawers, and then the base as those were removed. Next, I taped along the floor and above the soffit. I have found over the years that it pays to take the time to tape off areas that are not getting painted. Lastly, I removed the doors & drawers. I did consider painting with them in place but decided it would be faster in the long run if I removed them.

Step 2 – Paint

I do find that once the taping was done, the painting goes a lot faster than when I paint without tape. Using both a small a regular-sized painting pad, I applied two coats of paint, allowing the first coat to dry & cure for a couple of hours before applying the 2nd coat. I worked in sections, starting with the island. Since I was using my kitchen table as a workspace, I left the doors in place until I got to that section. That way, I’d only have a few doors on the table at a time. Once the paint was dry on each section of the base, I would reattach the dry doors.

Step 3 – Strip countertop trim

As I was painting the island, I decided to strip the wood trim along the edge of the countertop. Because it had a couple of coats of paint on it, it tended to chip along the most used areas. I figured it would be a quick job to strip the paint…but alas, it was not! I started with my new favorite stripper, QCS – Quick, Clean, Safe – because it’s not as messy as Citristrip. QCS removed the paint but the sealer that had been on the trim before I painted it (that’s right, I hadn’t taken that off prior to painting) wasn’t budging. So, I switched to Citristrip.

Using a paintbrush, I gooped on a thick coat of Citristrip and let it sit while I painted some of the cabinet doors. After it had set for about an hour, I used a putty knife to remove the sealer. I was happy to see that it was working really well!

Step 4 – Sand, Stain & Poly countertop trim

After the trim was stripped, I lightly sanded it using a sanding block then wiped it with a damp cloth to remove any sawdust. I prefer to use water-based stain when staining in the house, so the two stains I used are both water-based ones. When I stained the trim around the doors & drawers, I used a combination of colors. To mimic that, I used Provencial and added a little Ebony until the trim matched the existing woodwork. When the stain was dry, I applied a water-based polyurethane in satin. I applied both the stain and poly with a paintbrush.

Step 5 – Paint accents

When I painted the last two times, I also painted the two pieces of wood filigree that I had attached to the soffit. I liked the way they blended with the soffit, but this time, I wanted them to stand out more, so I painted them copper. I used the same mixture of copper, brown, black craft paint that I used on the appliance handles when I painted those earlier this year. I also stripped the paint off the metal accents in front of the kitchen sink. Those are now copper as well.

Finished Cabinets

The new color is close to the same depth of tone as the teal blue, but it is so much warmer and softer! It’s hard to get a true reading of the color when taking pictures. But in real life, there really is a difference between the two. Even though the color difference is subtle, I LOVE it! Because I had all the other supplies, the only cost to repainting was time and gallon of paint – and I only used 1/3 of it.

Teal blue

Teal green

Original, 1st , 2nd, 3rd Painting

Let me know what you think

Have you painted your kitchen cabinets? If so, what was your experience? If not, would you consider doing it? Let me know in the Comment section below. Painting kitchen cabinets is not difficult and making them unique is so much fun! I’d also love to hear what you think of the new color 🙂

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