Cabinet Refinishing Process.

Hi everyone, Michael from Craine Painting LLC here.

We are an Interior Painting Company that Specializes in Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, or as some people refer to it Kitchen Cabinet Painting (we don’t use paint on cabinets!)

I’ve gotten a lot of questions on our processes and procedures for Refinishing Cabinets, so I wanted to share the steps we use when “Painting Cabinets” and why we do them.

After the initial estimate, contract signing ,color selection and schedule have all been worked out here is our process for Cabinet Refinishing.

1. We arrive at your home and mask off the flooring in the areas we will be working in. The doors, drawers, and hinges are removed in sequence and marked so each piece goes back to the exact place it belongs. Any hardware is removed and placed with its corresponding drawer/door if you are keeping the hardware. The doors and drawers can either be taken offsite for prep and finishing or we can finish hem on site should you prefer as well.

2. We start cleaning your Kitchen Cabinets.

It doesn’t matter how clean your kitchen appears, you use it for cooking so there are oils that need to be completely removed to ensure proper adhesion. This can be a short process, for say a retired couple that eats out a lot, or a long process for a family that has a lot of children and a busy kitchen! Either way our first step is to degrease all of the kitchen cabinet boxes everywhere we will be coating them, the entire exterior surface of the cabinets and the lip of the face frame. Each kitchen will require a different amount of degreasing based upon the Cabinet traffic.

2.After degreasing we use a mix of Denatured alcohol to clean again before we move on to the sanding step. We have to make sure that every contaminate is removed before sanding, as we don’t want to push contamination into the pores of the wood while sanding.

3. We start sanding your cabinet boxes. The reason for this is your Kitchen Cabinets have a protective coating on them from the factory. We only use Festool sanders and Hepa-Extractors for our sanding process. These are sanders hooked up to Hepa-Vac dust extractors to keep the dust in your home to an absolute minimum. There will be some areas that we need to hand sand, however we Hepa-Vac all of the surfaces after sanding as well.

4. We clean again with our DA mix, let dry and then tack Cloth all of the surfaces to remove any loose sanding particles that may be left over.

5. We mask off the entire kitchen. We utilize zip walls and completely enclose the kitchen area. Walls and ceilings are masked off and each individual opening is masked so that the boxes can be sprayed. We set up a commercial vent fan with filters prior to spraying, to vent any paint smells out a window or door.

6. Prime. We spray our finishes with automotive grade equipment. The primer we will use and number of coats will be dependent on the type of wood your cabinets are. We like to use an alcohol based primer for woods with heavy tannins and grain and sometimes maple. On Heavy grained oak, we prefer to roll at least one coat of primer on to help reduce the depth of the grain. We also have other primers we use based upon the situation, primers we have extensively tested and abused to make sure they meet our expectations of durability, adhesion and stain blocking. After priming we test multiple areas for adhesion and start the next step.

7. We sand again at a higher grit and get the surface glassy smooth. We also Hepa-Vac all surfaces again and tack cloth again.

8. Spray day! Depending on the style of Kitchen Cabinet Painting you have picked we may apply 3-4 coats with Sanding of higher grits and vacuuming and tack clothing in between.

We primarily use General Finishes Enduro Poly as our top coats, a professional spray only product. We have tested many products and have found it to be the highest quality finish, that meets the KCMA standards of Durability for Kitchen Cabinets.

9. We repeat that entire process on your doors and drawers offsite (to stay out of your hair as much as possible)

10. We deliver the doors and drawers. Rehang and reinstall all of the hinges and hardware.

Most of our work is prep! The spraying is the easiest part. We use various Airless and HVLP spray guns for the highest quality finish possible, many times our finishes are smoother than the factory finish on our existing cabinets. No brush marks from us.

Over the past year I’ve met a lot of people that are hesitant to get their Cabinetry Refinished. I’ve also met a lot of people that scoff at the price and want to paint their cabinets themselves.

I wrote out our steps here for both types of people.

For the hesitant client, we understand that replacement cabinets for a kitchen can be anywhere from $15k-50k. And that is why we have such an involved prep and coating process, we don’t want to take any chances. It’s why we constantly test new products and steps on sample doors, to make sure they meet our standards of durability and quality before we roll them out to our clients.

As for the DIY painters, no prep paint is a recipe for disaster. If you are considering painting your own cabinets, proper prep is crucial to having a long lasting finish. I’ve seen DIY jobs fail spectacularly and the cost of stripping failing Finishes, is a lot of time and money. Do your research and spend most of your time on prep, for a long lasting finish.

Hope you have a great day

Michael Craine

Craine Painting LLC