DIY Refinish Your Cabinets

before

before

before

black color

after

white color after

after

When we looked at our house, it was something most people thought "oh, nice house, nice lot, but TONS of work." The ironic thing is one of my good friends said she walked through the house too when it was on the market and they loved the house--but thought it was a lot of work and didn't think twice about it. Well Scott and i were up for the challenge and on a hunt for a forever house with a good price tag, and shockingly enough one that was a fixer-uper! Yes, we are certifiably crazy, especially considering i was pregnant with twins at the time we were looking for a fixer-uper!  The house was bank owned--enough said foreclosures are always trashed.  Well, i loved the huge kitchen with tons of cabinetry and storage and stand up/sit in breakfast bar, loved the island, and the granite counters...but i HATED the cabinets.  Not my style.  So i decided to refinish them.  Everyone always asks me how i did it, so here we go, you score with a tutorial!  I wanted to go with an old world antique look, and wanted two-toned cabinets.  I still love the black and white combo but i may surprise myself and go all white before long, but needless to say i do love the way they turned out.  So to tell you how i did it.  I did a prime, paint, seal method.  My cabinets were in good shape, there wasn't any areas that needed smoothing out so instead of using an electric sander, i used liquid sander which took me only 45 min to wipe down all of my cabinets compared to several hours of electric or hand sanding.  I bought it at Home Depot its "Klean strip" brand and called liquid sander deglosser.  Its in the paint supply section.  I think one bottle was $18 and i have used it for several projects including my kitchen table redo {of course ill share that project too}.  You just rub it on your cabinets with an old rag for a few seconds all around to get the glossy finish off.  I used a high density foam roller to paint the cabinets, it would be much easier and quicker if you had a paint sprayer, but at the time i didn't have one {sigh i do now, would've made life easier} these are small rollers and are great for painting furniture too! So, i taped off my cabinets to protect the walls from paint, and started painting. I used a foam brush in hard to reach areas, and did about 2 coats of black on the upper half of my kitchen, and 3 coats of white on the bottom half.  I wanted the oak color to show through in some of the black spots for an old world look so did less coats of black.  With the black cabinets i just used a fine grain sheet of sand paper and hand sanded to distress along the edges and grooves only.  For the white cabinets i tried a few techniques until i got the look i was going for-first i tried a glaze and brown paint mixture-hated it, then i went with glaze and black paint mixture-hated that too.  I ended up taking a small art paintbrush and brown color of paint and hand painted to distress the edges how I wanted them.  I personally loved the all white clean look  before distressing on the white portion of my cabinets, but...I saw my two year old rub his Cheeto covered hands on those white cabinets and realized my sanity would not last if i kept them pure white.  I was so glad i distressed them after having done it a few months later I was wiping down my cabinets and realized there was lot of peanut butter smeared on my island which i didn't even notice because of the distressing.  WIN!! Anyway back on task.  After i painted the cabinets I sealed them again using foam roller/brush combo-only one coat with a water based polycrylic semi-gloss finish to ensure the cabinets wouldn't chip.  I did them 5 months ago and no chipping still.  This was such an easy method and realistic for me to do SLOWLY over time, thank goodness for a patient hubs who put up with multi-colored cabinets for a while before I finally finished!  The colors i used if you like this look were cottage white from Dunn Edwards, and premixed black Valspar paint from Home depot. Use exterior grade paint on cabinets and doors, it adheres better and doesn't fade.  If you want a mahogany look stain you will have to use an electric sander to sand the cabinets, then take a rag with your color stain and rub on evenly until you get the look you want, and of course seal after with polycrylic.  I'm still on the hunt for the perfect hardware, and have yet to find it...if you have any suggestions let me know!