While I didn’t film painting my cabinets, I will show the highlights and end results. I primarily didn’t film things because I’m painting in my makeshift spray booth that takes up half of my garage so it’s a bit crowded, plus, I didn’t want to get primer or paint on my recording equipment.
The way I painted everything was I painted the frames and everything else that required painting first, then I attached them to the cabinet boxes. This minimizes the time it took for me to mask everything off. Then I just go over the entire set (uppers, lowers, doors, shelves, etc) with a water-based clear coat finish. The reason I choose water-based rather than oil was so it would not be yellow over time and the white would stay white.
I managed to pack a ton into my garage to get them all sprayed. I had to stack some on top of the others but you have to do what you need to do and work with what you have in order to get the job done right?
As I sprayed everything I sprayed the upper cabinets upside down. This allowed me to spray the bottoms very thoroughly. It was a little bit of a tricky situation to spray the inside bottom of the uppers but I managed.
I put 5 coats of water-based polyacrylic clear coat on every surface. This process took a while. The process I do is I spray 2 coats down before I sand, then sand, then spray additional coats and sand only as necessary making sure NOT to sand the final coat of poly.
I used an Earlex HV5500 spray system to paint everything. I had to thin the INSL-X Cabinet Coat a little to meet the flow rate for the HVLP but did not have any issues once I got the needle to adjust accordingly. For the polyacrylic, I had to really tighten the needle to avoid getting runs. Even so, I did manage to get some runs if I stayed in one spot too long or double/tripled the same area.
In order to spray my doors and panels I built a door/panel tree. You can buy these but at nearly $400 I decided it was easier and cheaper to just build one.
I put all my doors and panels on it and would take one by one and spray them over on my cat litter bucket turn table. I used part of old exercise equipment for that turn table. This process worked great. I had a sheet of plastic between the tree and the spray area which kept the overspray contained.
Once I finished putting a coat on each of the doors and panels I simply put them back on the rack to dry. Now, I tend to paint the back side first because I want to finish with the front side as that is the side you’re going to see. My process is essentially to spray 1 coat on the back/edges and put it on a rack to dry. Once dry, spray one coat on the front/edges. Continuing this process until I get enough layers of paint and the clear finish on them that I want.
With that, I finished all the painting of and clear coating of my entire kitchen cabinet set. They may not be the BEST but they are better than most sets out there and are built to last!
As always if you have any questions or comments post them below or on my YouTube video comments section and I’ll do my best to respond.
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Equipment and Materials
*Disclaimer: While I attempt to list the equipment I use, some items have been discontinued or have newer models.
- Canvas Drop Cloth
- Earlex 5500 HVLP
- INSL-X Cabinet Coat
- Minwax Clear Polycrylic Water-Based Protective Finish Satin
- Painter‘s Plastic
- Painter’s Tape
- Sanding Sponges (Assorted)
- Zinsser BIN Primer
I hope you find this video useful and can use some of the tips presented. Feel free to leave any comments, suggestions, or experiences you have had below.
Some of the links in my video description and article above are Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you would like to make a different purchase from Amazon, you can also use the storewide link.