Who knew it would take a world pandemic to finally do our cabinets?! Even though the current situation our world is in right now is crazy and a little overwhelming, one good thing to come out of it is time. My husband has been working one week and off the next since Washington State has been put on lock down and it has been a blessing in disguise. Not only do we get quality family time and I get extra help with our boys but we also have had time to tackle house projects that always get put on the back burner. One house project that we have always meant to do was our kitchen cabinets. I wanted to share our little DIY project with you and write a post on how to paint your kitchen cabinets yourself for those of you who are wanting to do update your kitchen as well.

We decided to do it ourselves and it actually turned out pretty great for a couple of amateur painters. So if you have been wanting to do your kitchen cabinets or want to keep busy, stay here and scroll down for all the DIY kitchen cabinets or pin for later/reference.

How To Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets Yourself

First Step: Take off all the doors and drawers.

Now we have two little boys–a toddler and a ten month old. So we did our tops first because we all know little curiosities and hands would be all over taking things out of the bottom cabinets. Then once the tops were done, we did the bottoms.

Second Step: Degrease with TSP (name of the degreaser) all the cabinet doors, drawers, and around the doors.

You want to paint on clean cabinets so that way the paint sticks to it better.

Third Step: Sand, Sand, and More Sand

Make sure you sand until completely smooth so the paint ends up looking smooth. Sand all the shine out essentially.

Fourth Step: Tape everything off where you don’t want paint and put plastic wrap where the doors were.

We didn’t want to take everything out because we have two boys. So this way it saved us lots of time and hassle.

Fifth Step: Primer goes on

Primer is a nice step because it fills in the grain so that way your cabinets have a smooth, finished look. We only put primer on the front part of the cabinets and not on the backs. We wanted to save primer and time.

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Sixth Step: Paint, Paint, and More Paint

It’s important what kind of paint you purchase. If you cheap out and get low quality paint, your cabinets will reflect that and also will more than likely fade and/or chip away easily. We bought Sherwin Williams Pro Classic that has a self leveler in it which means the paint levels out as it drys. It was worth the money because we want it to look nice for a long time.

We did three coats of paint for the front of the doors and two coats of paint for the back. We did two coats of paint on the “boxes” and two on the island.

We used a paint brush for the first two and the final we went over it lightly with a knit roller brush. This creates a REALLY smooth look. No lines or grain shown.

Note we chose a lighter color of paint so it took more coats so just depends on what color you choose. It is also important to note to paint with the grain. So if the grain runs up and down, you will paint up and down.

Seventh Step: Once all dried, put the doors back on the cabinets. And touch up where needed!

And those are the seven tips on how to paint your kitchen cabinets yourself!! I hope these tips help and would love to know how it turned out below! Good luck and have fun DIY-ing.

Here are some before & afters!

We do plan on putting handles on the doors and drawers but for now we are happy with them! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask below and again, I would love to see how your cabinets turned out!