Helping old get back its integrity

 A friend of mine once said that plaster’s easy, it just takes forever. He had a point.

To take a break from our plaster work of weeks past in the sewing room, I revisited the kitchen cabinets.

We left off with the kitchen cabinets being challenging to decipher to say the least. In the last month or so, we haven’t been able to figure out what they’re necessarily made of throughout – the face frame might be a mixture of whatever nice wood that was available at the time but the boxes themselves are plywood (that’s a really good thing). One has a wood back and the other is built right up to the plaster wall behind it.

Another thing we learned is that no matter how much stripper I put on those cabinets, the end panels weren’t going to be able to take stain; it looks like they were originally painted. This meant that my options were to leave them alone until I find a new location in my home for them (with very mixed up finishes), paint them again or wait in general until I do the kitchen entirely.

After a few weeks of deliberation, I decided to paint instead of trying to figure out another option with the end panels.

First was choosing the color. My mom recommended Coastal Beige from Behr after their cabinet refinishing project a while back.

Now, I don’t know about y’all but when I hear “coastal beige” I think sand or Nantucket (is that weird?) which sends me to slate-y blues.

It turns out that Coastal Beige is a pretty off-white that meets the 3 C’s: crisp, clean and classic (yes, I did just make this up). Wanting to get to work, I picked up a gallon of semi-gloss premium primer + paint on Saturday morning.

Once I got home, I had to prep. Cabinets are not like other pieces of furniture. If you’re going to paint them, you need a really clean surface to start with.  Trisodium Phosphate (TSP) is a heavy duty cleaner that helps achieve that starting point – but it’s worth noting that gloves are, as always, your friends. I mixed up a batch (1/4 c. to 2 gallons of warm water) and got to work scrubbing down the cabinets. Remember, mine were already stripped and sanded (and we can all remember their first major cleaning in our first-ever post)!

After bumming around on the couch for an hour to allow for plenty of dry time, I decided to also run a tack cloth over everything to get just that last tiny bit of dust that might be hiding out. This turned out to be a good choice since it didn’t come off completely clean.

Once everything was super squeaky clean and dry and I’d protected my floors and taped off my painting area, I pulled out my really nice roller and paint brush (invest in these, people, good tools make a world of difference) and got to work – priming.

 

That’s right! Quality primer – I used Zinsser – is a must if you want your end product to look great. Even though the paint includes primer, the finish looks its best with the added layer and effort. I did the entire cabinet surface – inside and outside. If you could see it, I primed it.

Once the primer was dry – a few hours – I added the first coat of Coastal Beige.  Still a little splotchy, I’d always expected to need at least two coats of paint. This is a really good reason to always get more paint than you think you’ll need – running out and buying more might not actually provide you with the exact same color – plan ahead.

I got the second coat and mostly final coat up before church on Sunday morning and I think they’re beautiful. The kitchen certainly looks newer and maybe a little brighter and bigger and I know The Roommates love them! And, as always, I love that these were here, old and cost me so little money for a great update. Next up – the other set!