Painting Kitchen Cabinets - Kitchen Design Ideas

Basics of painting kitchen cabinets and kitchen design ideas.

Kitchen Cabinets are probably one of those few pieces of furniture that take an awful lot of use and abuse, just by being in the kitchen. They have to deal with everything from cooking grease to grimy, sticky hands. You may try various methods of cleaning your kitchen cabinet but after some time, you may not bear to look at the grime that is collected on it and may wonder if a replacement is not in order. However, you may be surprised by what a mere painting job can do for your cabinet.

A good painting job can not only make your cabinet look like new but if you do it yourself, will even cost you far less than replacing them outright. For example, just a new 10X12 feet kitchen cabinet can cost about $5000. Add the costs of installation, new counters and miscellaneous stuff and you can see how expensive a replacement is going to be. Moreover, older cabinets are usually far sturdier and made of more superior material than what you may get nowadays.

Of course, you could try refacing your cabinet, which is a way of just replacing the front panels of doors and drawers while keeping the cabinet box as it is. However, even here a good quality, refacing job may start at around $3500. If your cabinet has suffered minor damages like worn surfaces or some little nicks and dings, then a paint job can make it look new. What you could do is combine the painting with some new kitchen cabinet hardware. So, if your kitchen cabinets are structurally solid but just look dirty and dark, you could go in for a paint job.

A professional will be able to spray-paint your kitchen cabinet for about a thousand dollars or so. However, there is an even cheaper way you can redo your cabinet. Do the job yourself. You do not necessarily need a spray to get a smooth coat of paint - a brush and paint should do the trick. Also the surface preparation required for both is the same. Of course, brush painting does take time, you need to sand and do the brushworks slowly and carefully. One should set aside a time of at least two to three weeks to do a good job. But by the time you are done, you would have given your cabinet a smooth, glowing look and saved yourself a packet.