Cabinets....forever...

Our cabinets are perfectly good maple, stained lightly, but they are pretty grubby from the previous owner, sloppy flipping painters, and a summer of crazy canning lady.   We became huge fans of Sherwin Williams in our last apartment (as we repainted several rooms and many pieces of furniture) and had decided to use some white enamel trim paint for the cabinets as a starting point.  One coat of primer would give a good visual representation, and then several more coats of paint and possibly poly to protect from, you know, kitchen.

Several of our family members and friends have recently redone their kitchens and we think their dark and stained cabinets are beautiful, but for our cavelike galley situation, we felt a light color was best.  We didn’t know how well finishes like chalk paint, stain over the existing treatment, etc would hold up and we were familiar with how this exact paint held up on a built-in hutch in our apartment over the past year.  We don’t necessarily love white on white on white, especially in a kitchen, but the hope was that there should be enough contrast from the backsplash and countertop that the space just looks clean and open.



While Alex was in Austin, I pulled out my magical bin of sanding supplies from the hoodoo room to survey what we had.  Approximately everything; no additional supplies were purchased for this, which is how I know I have a refinishing problem.

We took down the rest of the doors and emptied out the cabinets we planned to reconfigure, then Alex covered the rest of the cabinets to minimize dust in them.  I removed all of the hinges and hardware from the doors, and patched the holes where the existing handles had been attached.  We looked for ones that fit the holes, but couldn’t find anything we liked and really wanted to keep the project moving, so decided puttying and painting would take the trouble out of it.  I found a putty from Elmer's Glue that went on pink and turned white when dry, but basically by the time I got through everything the first pieces were dry enough to sand.

We cleared out the living room and I laid down a huge dropcloth, from our many roommate days when we did things like cover furniture with dropcloths, and got going with my dear little sander.  I bought this thing in 2006, when I thought stripping an overvarnished table would be like no big and doable in a weekend.  The sander was a good purchase, though, because it’s gotten me through several dressers, some building projects, tons of craigslist finds, and now, our cabinets.  We decided to start by sanding with 80 grit to strip and then 120 to smooth, and to do some light sanding in between to lessen the amount of brush stroke appearance on flat surfaces.
I did the twenty doors (not sure why I thought this was a good idea?!) and seven drawer fronts (two under the sink will become tipouts) over a couple of nights, while Alex did the cabinet frames and removed old shelves etc in the kitchen.  One coat of primer seemed to work for him, and two coats of enamel.  It looks goooood, like really good, in there and the doors are coming along.  Well, really they’re taking forever because of the whole two-sided thing. But I am trying and not just watching Netflix in the guest room, promise.