Refinishing Cabinets: Inexpensive Way to Remodel

What equipment would you need?

Prepare newspapers, rags, paper towels and plastic sheets to protect the work area prior to refinishing cabinets. For this project, you would need a can of bonding primer, paint brushes, painting tape to keep lines tidy and cans of glossy paint in the color you desire. You can also keep sandpaper handy to even out a few kinks before repainting.

Steps in refinishing cabinets

Before refinishing cabinets, it would be more convenient to appropriate a painting stand or table for this project to ensure that you work at eye level. Arrange all the tools that you would need and keep them within easy reach. Prepare Ziploc bags to keep screws that would be taken apart. Remember that although it is generally an easy process, refinishing cabinets by yourself may take a couple of days at best, so you might want to factor that in with your planning.

The initial step is to remove the cabinet doors and place the hinges and screws in Ziploc bags. Label them to avoid interchanging the parts. Once you're done with this, you may now “prep” or prepare the cabinet for repainting. You may need to perform mild sanding if the old paint used is a glossy type of enamel. This helps the new paint adhere better.

After sanding the cabinet doors and surfaces, clean them with soap and water to remove any dust, grime build-up, cobwebs or debris. Allow a few hours for these surfaces to dry. Once dry, apply painting tape on surfaces where you don't want the new paint to be applied, or to keep paint away from parts where a different color would be applied. This should likewise be applied on counter tops, walls and floors to keep paint splashes and smudges away.

Lay the cabinet doors flat on the protective covering and proceed with priming. Brush on the bonding primer as if it were ordinary paint, but be careful not to interchange the paint and primer brushes. For best results, apply two coats of bonding primer. Allow four to five hours between coats.

Final steps in refinishing cabinets

After allowing the primer to dry, the cabinet and its doors can now be painted. Employ steady and even strokes and use two to three coats of paint to ensure evenness. Take into account the time interval needed between applications, which may vary according to the type of paint used. Let a day pass before reattaching the doors to the cabinet, and ensure that the hinges are tightly screwed to the cabinet doors for them to open and close correctly.