A Note From The Home Depot
Lydia D’Antonio, the blogger behind Lydia Louise Blog, wanted a cabinet upgrade without a full kitchen renovation. With some smart planning and a little bit of paint she was able to make a big impact. Read on for a step-by-step tutorial on how to give your kitchen a fresh, new look.
The Before
The one thing I have always wanted in my forever home was a white kitchen. You know you have project passion when making the beautiful, dream kitchen you have always wanted, is something that brings actual tears to your eyes!
The Home Depot is one of my favorite stores that I frequent on a regular basis. Being creative makes me happy. And getting it right gives me pride. I love making our home ours. I love putting my print on every corner. As far as I can see, I am not slowing down anytime soon.
Working with The Home Depot has been a fun project that made a lasting memory for my husband and myself. We settled on painting our kitchen cabinets white, and doing it all under $300! I am going to share the steps we took, the products we used (all from The Home Depot), and the mishaps we had.
Step 1: Supplies
We first looked up ways that others had painted their kitchen cabinets to get an idea of what all we would need. After that we headed over to our local Home Depot to load up on supplies.
Step 2: Set Up
We already owned a paint sprayer and plastic tarp. After we took all the cabinet doors and drawer faces off, we emptied all the cabinets, peeled this horrible sticker liner out of every drawer and shelf, and got to work setting up the supplies so we could get started. We set up a space in our garage to paint, and to be honest I was quite impressed. We highly recommend doing this to avoid getting paint everywhere.
Step 3: Preparation
Before we could do anything we needed to go through the entire kitchen, and scrub them with soap and water. We wanted to clean up any food, grease or dust that had been stuck to surfaces.
We also went through to create an even better base, and instead of sanding down, we used liquid sander and rubbed everything down with that.
Step 4: Priming
After all of that, we were finally able to start priming. We used a “no sanding needed” primer, and with a 2 hour dry time this took us through an entire afternoon.
Step 5: Painting
Finally we were able to put on our first layer of paint. The paint had a dry time of 4-8 hours. Since we had to flip every door and drawer face, it took two days to do both layers. However we made one major mistake that pushed us into another day! It was hard to keep the primer and paint separate since we poured both of them into separate jugs for the paint sprayer. Unfortunately we messed them up, and instead of putting on a second layer of paint…we did another layer of primer on top of the first layer of paint!
The Reveal: Our New Kitchen Cabinets
It took us approximately a total of 5 days to do the entire project. We are still adding things and changing things here and there. The ability to shop Home Depot to get all the supplies quickly and easily with the help of Home Depot paint associates, get everything set up and organized, and finally knock out the steps of liquid sanding, priming, and finally painting…the experience was more than exceptional. As a husband and wife team, we mentioned several times to each other how cool of a memory this will be; painting our kitchen cabinets together.
Lessons Learned
There were parts of this project we did not expect. Therefore there are some things that we learned and would pass on to anyone doing the same type of project.
- Do not rush the paint drying time. Most paint will leave a window of dry time on the directions. That can be a 2-4 hour expectancy between wait times. Our best tip is to wait the entire amount of time, or even better? Wait longer! The longer you wait, the better it will look, and the less likely it will be to ruin it!
- Tape everything! It can be really easy to get lazy with this step, but if you take the time to do it right away, the priming and painting will be much faster. The clean up will be much much easier too!
- When you are getting to the end, do not hurry because you are excited. Take the time to make sure you are putting the cabinet doors and drawer faces on the correct way! It is quickly very frustrating to almost be done, and then have to spend an additional few hours fixing everything you put on incorrectly!
Make your space everything you dreamed of. I never thought painting our kitchen cabinets was an option, and I certainly did not think it could be done for $300. It was really incredible to have the opportunity to work with The Home Depot on this project not only to share our experience, but because it has given us the confidence to tackle projects we never thought we could. We have a ton more home improvement projects on our list now, and we will be diving into them all now that we know all we have to do it go to The Home Depot to make it happen!