Kitchen revitalization

Steve and I had a very busy weekend completing the painting of my mother in-law's kitchen.  This was a present that we had given her for Christmas.  We bought an empty paint can from Home Depot and we put paint chips inside, along with a gift certificate that would entitle her to a kitchen make over.  We purchased one package of the flooring that we wanted to use.  She had the option to change the colour if she wanted, but the product wasn't negotiable.

I do warn anyone reading this post that if you do decide to take on the project of painting your kitchen cupboards, that you give yourself a couple of weeks to do it.  IT TAKES A LONG TIME.

I hope you like the before and after pictures.  (we are not done yet)

 

Here are a few pictures of the products that we used to complete this project.

The Zinsser Cover Stain Primer-Sealer is by far the best primer (based on my opinion).  It is an oil based primer, but really works good and you don't need to do any sanding prior to priming (according to the can). NOTE: do not use TSP to clean before you use this primer.  The can says NOT TO.  

We also chose to go with the Benjamin Moore Advance paint.  It is suppose to resemble an oil paint, but it is an Alkyd.  It has great leveling qualities and it is durable.  But VERY expensive.  We decided to go for it as our kitchen cupboards also need to be repainted, and the product used on our cabinets was a Benjamin Moore paint, so we picked the same colour. The paint left over will go towards painting our kitchen cupboards. The colour is Chantilly Lace. 

The Benjamin Moore retailer suggested that we use these little but long rollers to paint the cabinets.  Steve had heard of them before, so we decided to give them a go.  They worked quite well. I found that a lot of people say to use sponge rollers. I find that they don't hold enough paint, so it's harder to roll the paint on and you don't get an even coverage.

The Allure flooring we have installed before at a friends house.  It is said to be a great flooring and easy to install.  This is true with the exception of the cutting. The box says that you use an Xacto knife.  I guess you can, but we found that it was really hard to cut, especially  straight.  So we used one of Steve's new tools.  (shown below).  This worked very well at cutting the flooring and made it faster also. 

No glue needed.  Self stick.  

Here you can see the tool that we used to cut the floor.  It's a Ridgid JobMax Multi Tool.  Very handy little tool to have. 

Finally this is the paint that we used on the walls.  Since the walls were white to begin with, hadn't been painted in a long time and the paint colour chosen was dark, we opted for the paint and primer in one.  I only had to do 2 coats and the coverage was exceptional. 

So I started off on Friday night by wiping the doors down with a soapy water mixture.  I allowed them to dry and then I sanded the exterior of the doors down, lightly, while they were still hanging.  I did this because Steve hadn't arrived yet and I did not want to tackle trying to hold the door while I worked on removing screws, all while standing on a chair.  

After we removed all the hardware off the doors, I started priming the doors as well as the cabinets.  Unfortunately we hit a little snag, which was not fixable at 4 am in the morning.  We ran out of primer.  We didn't have enough to prime the backs of the cabinets.  This was due to the fact that the can was from home and not a full can.  

Our original plan was to prime the fronts and backs of the cabinets.  We would then place small finishing nails, 2 on each side of the top and bottom of the cabinets and use blocks to rest the nails on to, so that we could paint the backs and fronts at the same time to save time.  Unfortunately, the cabinets doors were made of what looked like MDF and were not very thick, so the doors were splitting.  Therefore we couldn't do that anyways.

So we finished priming and went to be by 5 am.  We were up again by 8:30 am.  The next job was putting a coat of paint on the cabinet doors and cubes (as I call them).   We started at the same spot where we started priming.  This way we knew that the primer was dry (2 hrs to dry between coats).  While I painted the cubes, Steve primed the back of the cabinets doors.  By the time I was done the cubes, the primer on the back of the doors was dry and I put 1 coat of paint on the front of the doors.

This was one of the doors after 1 coat of primer.  As you can see the coverage is really good.  We used a cheap brush to paint in the groves and a foam roller to paint the flat sections.  This was due to the fact that we didn't want to have to clean the brushes and the rollers with mineral spirits after we were done. We just opted to dispose of the brush and roller.  Since we were just priming we weren't worried.  You just have to make sure that you get an even coverage.  

We had cabinet doors everywhere. 

Here is the cubes with one coat of primer.  Again pretty good coverage. 

This is a door with one coat of paint.   We opted to put thin coats rather than heavy coats, so that it would give a smoother finish.

While the doors were drying we started painting the walls.  Shouldn't take too long, right?  Well, the first two walls didn't take that long, until I reached the cabinets, and then there was a lot of cutting in and this took much longer.

This was after two coats of paint. 

Paint is Behr - Antique Earth UL 140-4 

So we were faced with a big decision, again.  We couldn't put a second coat, or paint on the back of the doors until the first coat we applied was dry, 16 hrs.  This would have taken us to approximately 11:30 pm Saturday night.  We were leaving on Sunday afternoon and we still needed to install the flooring and put a second coat of paint on the walls.  If we put a second coat on the fronts, or even the first coat on the backs of the doors, it would mean that the paint would not be dry until 7 or 8 pm Sunday. This would all be dependent on how long it took us to paint all the doors.  We were hoping to leave before that, so we decided that we didn't want to chance the paint not being dry and the paint on the doors getting damaged.   So we painted a second coat on the frames themselves. These don't get handled like the doors do anyways.  So Steve stayed up late, till about 3 am to put a second coat on the cabinets.  I needed to get some sleep.

Next day I painted the second coat on the walls and then Steve and I installed the flooring.

oh!!! I forgot to mention that we also spray painted the hinges with a Rustoleum product.  Steve said that it was the one used for appliances.  So the finish would be durable.  We also decided that we would spray paint the screws so that they would match the hinges.  We screwed the screws on a block of wood to be able to spray paint them. 

The painting was done. The flooring installed.  The hinges put back on and the doors installed. Finally we were done, well for now.  We will have to go back and put additional coats of paint on the doors.  But since the cubes are done, we will be able to leave the hinges on the cubes and only remove them from the doors. 

So to recap:

• Cabinet doors colour - Benjamin Moore - Chantilly Lace
• Wall colour - Behr - Antique Earth - UL 140-4
• Flooring - Allure - Cyprus 

I know the pictures turned out a bit blurry.   We were in a rush to leave that I almost forgot to take these and I didn't check them to make sure they were OK. 

I will update the post once the doors are finished, so that you can see the final product and how the paint worked out. 

Now for a much needed rest.