ORC Spring ’24 Week 7: Painted Upper Cabinets

After finishing the lower kitchen cabinets last week, it was time to tackle the uppers!

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This was a way bigger job since there are not only more cabinets, but also more shelves to paint. The first step was removing all the cabinet doors (ten in total), and taking off all of the hardware. I labeled the doors by number in one of the hinge holes and covered it with painters tape. This way I would know where they go after they’re painted. I didn’t do this with the base cabinets because there were so few of the same size but it created unnecessary problems that could have easily been avoided simply by labeling everything. Lesson learned!

After taking off the doors, I then emptied out all of the cabinets and threw away expired canned food and donated some glassware and serveware dishes we no longer used or needed. You would not believe the things I found in our Hurricane Emergency Food Supply. Canned food that expired in 2017! Time to refresh our food stores I think!

Finding a place to put everything that was in the cabinets was challenging too. Pretty much every bag, empty box and flat surface is covered with something from the kitchen right now.

Once I got all the cabinets emptied, it was time to prep for paint. When I did the lower cabinets, I didn’t use the paint sprayer for the primer on the cabinet boxes or the doors but I’m going to try it for the uppers. That means taping everything off in the kitchen! Luckily I found this pre taped painters film that made covering everything way easier. Once everything was tape off, we were ready for primer.

I decided to test out the primer with the paint sprayer outside first on the cabinet shelves and doors. The only issue is that I didn’t have enough space to hang everything up to spray them like I did with the lower cabinets. Instead, I laid everything out on our back patio on a plastic drop cloth. This was not ideal, but it was the best we could do! Once everything was laid out, it was time to prime. I was surprised how easy it was to spray the primer with the paint sprayer. I’ve heard that sometimes you have to thin out the paint for it to work, but I didn’t find that necessary. It worked great, just like with the paint!

After priming the doors and shelves I was confident enough to try it inside as well. There is actually very little overspray which is what I was most concerned about. I do however regret not wearing a full painting suit. Don’t make the same mistake I did unless you want your hair spray painted white and little flecks of paint all over yourself. Again, lesson learned! I did wear a respirator and eye protection which is another must!

After allowing the paint to dry for a couple hours, I was able to flip over the shelves and doors to prime the other side. Here is where I made yet another mistake. I left them outside overnight to dry and it was really windy that night and lots of crap from the trees blew all over the patio, covering my freshly primed doors with bird poop and tree fallout. So the next day I spent a good 30 minutes cleaning off every single piece and flipping over the plastic tarp after sweeping off all the dirt. Next time I’ll bring everything inside once it’s dry. Continuing to learn things the hard way so you don’t have to!

After everything was primed, I sprayed two coats of semi-gloss cabinet paint in the color HGTV Sherwin Williams “Extra White” on everything. On the cabinets in the kitchen, I realized after priming that I needed to caulk all the seams which weren’t visible before but now looked terrible that everything was painted white. So that was a little side quest I had to complete before painting. The caulk only takes 20 minutes to dry and is then paintable so it didn’t set me back too much. After two coats of paint, the kitchen was ready to put back together!

I removed all of the film and painters tape, using a utility knife to cut the seams to prevent peeling off any fresh paint. Next, I added new soft close hinges to all of the doors and put on the gold cabinet door pulls. I had Devin help me put all the doors back on and adjust them to get the hinges to close properly and get everything aligned. The hinges have a four way adjustment so that you can move the doors up and down, and in and out. They also have a screw that adjusts the speed at which they close which is cool!

I also added these little clear rubber bumpers to the cabinet doors and drawers which muffles the sound and also protects the paint. They had foam bumpers before which I had to remove before painting.

So that’s pretty much it! Painting the kitchen cabinets was a big undertaking but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be thanks to the paint sprayer. This is a very doable project that is not only beginner friendly but also budget friendly! New cabinets are so expensive and ours were perfectly functional, they were just very dark and didn’t match the rest of the house. Not my vibe at all! By just painting them, it completely changed the feel of the kitchen and the white uppers make it feel so much bigger! I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’m not going to lie, I was very intimidated by this project and nervous it wasn’t going to turn out looking professional but my fears were put to rest. It looks great!

Here’s what the kitchen looked like before.

And here is the kitchen after!

Next week I’ll be sharing the final reveal of the kitchen for the last Week of the Spring ’24 One Room Challenge! Now is the fun part where I get to move everything back into the kitchen, reorganize the shelves and style everything!

I almost forgot! I made a full YouTube tutorial for this project which you can find HERE!

Until next week, Happy DIY-ing!

-Selene Builds Things