You think it'll take that long? Nah...

This was never intended to be the long-term fix. When I first started looking into refinishing/painting/somethinging my kitchen cabinets, the estimates said it would take several weekends. I scoffed.

To be fair, I had my reasons. The best reason was that we have somewhere in the <10 sq. ft. range of counter top space. It would seem that that means not a lot of cabinetry too, right?

As y’all have already seen, stripping the first bank of cabinets was pretty easy. Surprisingly easy even, if a little exploratory. I’m really not sure what would possess someone to paint their cabinets bright orange…

When I got started on the second bank of cabinets one afternoon, I kind of expected to find orange paint under a few layers of paint again. Haha. Hahaha. This time, it was… 70s children, you should be expecting this… green!

The lower cabinets still had contact paper in them too so that had to go – it was wellllll past grimy (interestingly, this was previously our cleaning supply cabinet).

 

These cabinets weren’t too much harder than the last, although they were more challenging to get to in their own little corner and in a little worse shape than the others. This round meant lots of time on either ladders or standing on counter tops for me!

Like the other set, once they were fully stripped, I scrubbed them with TSP, tack clothed the heck out of them and gave them a coat of primer.

 

A couple of coats of paint later, and we were in business. You know… so long as we were open to having everyone and their cousins knowing all of the business since there were no doors.

With the doors sitting in the dining room with the rest of the kitchen stuff, it was time to get started.

Taking all of the painted on hardware off of 11 doors was the first bit of fun.

 

The hinges got lots of TLC from me with time in the crockpot (that’s just water, no chemicals!), a good scrubbing with an old toothbrush and toothpicks, another crockpot bath for a few, scrubbing in a baking soda and vinegar bath for a while for a few, some brass darkening solution and some additional rinsing.

I think it was worth it and I love that they look old and a little weathered – what do you think?

 

After sanding the doors down outside and with a mask and eye protection on (hint hint), washing them and waiting for them to dry, I spray-primered them. This was a first for me but seems to have still worked well to get the smoother finish I wanted. I would recommend that you have a clean paintbrush ready in case you get any splatters like I did.

 

It dried really quickly but I gave all of them a little extra time before adding 2 coats of new paint to match the cabinets themselves.

 

Some new handles (just interim!), reattaching the hinges, and the doors were ready to go back up with the help of The Roommate. 

In the end, it took several weekends – about 4, I think, if they’re added together – but I think it was completely worth it and made our kitchen feel much more livable until we complete the whole thing later this fall.

 

What do you think?

P.S. If you were concerned about these being original, so was I. We learned during this bank’s refinishing that they’re not original. This is a picture of the back of the base cabinets (and that’s a piece of baseboard in the back that wouldn’t have been there if these were original):