Adding color to our kitchen!
My husband and I loved the kitchen in our apartment when we moved in. The open design made the living area feel spacious, it had enough and more storage for our needs and there was no dearth of counter space. So obviously we did not consider remodeling. The only thing we intended to do was install the microwave above the stove to free up some more counter space; but it was very low on our priority list.
But after a couple of months we started feeling that it was too white. We felt that way about the rest of the house too; everything was either white or cream — carpets, walls, tiles, windows, doors, cabinets etc. While it was easy to fix the other areas with artwork, draperies and furniture, the kitchen remained white. I had selected the ‘fat chef’ as the theme for kitchen decor, but the little splash of red that the fat chef decor added was overshadowed by the vast white stretch of cabinets.
Changing the cabinets was not an option; it was too elaborate a solution and seemed wasteful to us, given that functionally we had no complaints. My go-to home improvement fix is painting; but we were worried that painting the cabinets would make them stand out too much. It would be especially bad given that it is an open floor plan and the kitchen is fully visible from the living room.
Looking for inspiration online, I found a kitchen with two-tone cabinets and it seemed like the perfect solution for what we wanted to do. A popular option with the two tone design was to have a darker color for the bottom cabinets and a lighter color for the top. That did not work for us as the bottom cabinets had low visibility and leaving the top cabinets untouched was as good as doing nothing. The idea of leaving the doors white and painting the visible portions of the cabinet (like in the image linked above) appealed more to us but we were not fully convinced.
The type of the cabinet doors we had, provided a natural solution to the problem. Our cabinet doors were recessed panel. A recessed panel door is when the center panel is slightly lower than the surrounding door frame. We decided to paint the door frame and leave the panel white in both the top and bottom cabinets. Since the drawers were flat paneled (no raised edges/ borders) and had a much smaller footprint than the cabinet doors, we decided to paint them solid. Green seemed to be the color of choice online when I looked at two tone kitchens where white was the other color and we liked the look. Our shade of choice was something between sage and pickle. Having made all the big decisions we watched videos online to figure out everything we would need and headed to the nearby Home Depot.
The first thing we had to decide when selecting the paint was selecting the sheen. Sheen just refers to how much light the painted surface will reflect. From low to high the order is flat < eggshell< semi-gloss < gloss. Flat gives a matte effect and glossy paints are shinier. Higher the sheen, easier it is to clean the surface. So people typically choose semi-gloss or gloss finishes for high traffic areas. The one disadvantage of a glossy finish is that the underlying imperfections in the surface are more visible. We chose semi-gloss which is typically recommended for kitchen cabinets.
We looked at several shades of green but nothing clicked. We saw a deep red color that we really liked. Compared to the greens, this seemed to contrast the white better. Also the fat chef decor we had was mostly white and red; so we could visualize it matching the existing things we had. We decided to go with the ‘Oriental berry’ from Glidden.
The 80–20 rule of painting is that it takes 80% of the time and effort to prepare and just 20% of the time to actually paint. We first started with the drawers as they could all be taken out easily.
- The first step is to remove the knobs from the drawers and keep them separately. We didn’t have to mark which drawers go where as we could tell based on the size (and if we couldn’t tell they were exchangeable). If needed this is a good time to do that.
- Cleaning with TSP: The next step was to wipe all surfaces with a TSP solution. This is especially important for a cabinet in a kitchen as there is bound to be some grease/grime. The instructions on the box give you the amount of TSP to add to a gallon of water to form the cleaning solution. We did not need that much solution, hence just made a smaller quantity with a similar proportion. Because TSP is a strong cleaner necessary precaution needs to be taken to avoid skin contact.
Pro-tip 1: TSP is tri-sodium phosphate but all the cool kids call it TSP. So if you go to the home depot guy and ask for ‘tri-sodium phosphate’ he will immediately know that you are new at this. - Sanding the surface: The surface we wanted to paint already had paint on it and we had to scrape it off so that the new layer of paint will stick well on the surface. You get sanding sponges/ sand paper that you can use to polish the surface with. Because the sanding block is coarse it removes the existing layer of paint while polishing with it. Sanding generates a lot of dust. So cover all surrounding surfaces before you start sanding. We wiped the surface with a tack cloth post sanding to remove all the dust particles.
- Painting: Finally we got to the painting. We had our moment of panic when we applied the first coat of paint on the first drawer. The color did not look at all like what we had expected. It was a bright red, like a stop light. But from my decades of applying nail polish I remembered that you only get the true color after applying two coats. We waited for the first coat to dry and were relieved after painting the second coat.
Pro-tip 2: When you are painting over an existing color, the base color(white), if very different from the new color(berry red) can alter the shade of the new paint. In these cases two coats are necessary to bring out the real shade. If the two colors are very similar, one coat might be sufficient.
Pro-tip 3: Never ever buy paint without first buying a sample and testing it out. Paint two coats preferably on the exact same surface in the same area (if selecting wall paint). The number of coats, the lighting on that surface etc can change the shade.
We got very lucky with our cabinet paint but several other times after that the samples ended up looking very different compared to what we thought it would look like and we averted many disasters. - We gave sufficient time for the paint to dry before reattaching the knobs. If the paint is not fully dry, when you touch, it will not stick but will chip when applying pressure during contact like screwing back the knobs. We screwed back the original knobs we had taken out for the paint job.
The drawers didn’t take too long to do as we could do them in parallel and take them out and work in a comfortable area. We decided to not remove the doors from their hinges and paint them while they were still attached as we were painting just the frames on the outside. The issue was when we made that decision, we forgot to consider the Step 3.5 that did not apply to drawers.
3.5 Taping: We had to put painters tape along the boundary where the door frames meet the recessed panel and also on the cabinet where the frames come in contact with the cabinet.This was to ensure that the paint was limited to the door frames.
Doing the same steps on the doors was more effort than the drawers as we had to be more careful (to ensure we did not end up sanding the panel etc). Also some of the areas were hard to access; we had to stand on the counter top in uncomfortable corners to sand/tape/paint the frames. Obviously if we had taken the doors off, this would have not been the case. I am still not sure whether that would have made it easier or increased the work (as in that case we would have spent time re-attaching the doors).
You can see the finished cabinets in the picture below. We were and are very happy with the result. It was our first DIY home improvement project. Because it was low risk (worst case we just paint all cabinets white again) it allowed us to not worry too much and quickly execute. An added benefit of choosing red was that we get cookware sets in red. As we replaced saucepans etc we just chose the red ones to match our kitchen; you can see the red skillet (on the stove) in the picture.
Project details
- Materials used: TSP, sponge(for applying TSP solution), sanding sponge, painter’s tape, paint (2 quart), paint brush, paint buckets(throwaway plastic containers to pour paint)
- Time: ~ 2 days
- Cost: 70$
