I’ve dreamt of owning a green kitchen for most of my adult life, so when I bought my first home 6 months ago, nothing was going to stop me from swapping out the grey kitchen cabinets as soon as possible.
A new kitchen will easily cost £1000s, and buying a house had drained my savings so I embarked on a mission to get my dream green kitchen for under £100 by painting the kitchen cabinets myself. I’ve written about home decor for 6 years, upcycled furniture, and watched every series of Interior Design Masters, so I thought I was well-prepared for the easy DIY project of transforming my kitchen with a pot of paint.
I was very naive. While I have managed to save £1000s and created a kitchen I now love, it was not what I’d call an easy process. I might have saved money, but it cost me time and took over most of my house for the best part of two months.
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1. It’s not a weekend project
This was my first huge mistake. I honestly believed I could finish painting all my kitchen cabinets over a bank holiday weekend. It’s now been two months, and I still have the dishwasher door and kickboards to paint.
Painting kitchen cabinets takes time; just the prep work of washing and sanding the cabinet doors took me half a day. The painting itself is the fastest part; most of the time you’ll spend will just be waiting for the paint to dry between coats. I made the mistake of trying to paint a second coat after just 2 hours. I’ve learnt the hard way that you want to wait a few more hours than this for a more durable finish.
Finally, when you think you’re done, you need to leave the cabinets time to cure, ‘I would give them at least 24 hrs cure time before reattaching,’ recommends Kayleigh Sherbourne, Frenchic Paint’s DIY Specialist and more seasoned kitchen cabinet painter than me.
My particular project took longer than it should have for three reasons: I decided to paint both sides of the cabinet doors, I had a small floor area to work with, so I had to work in batches, and I didn’t time the project well. Rather than blocking out the proper time to finish it, I was trying to fit the odd coat of paint in around family visits and summer holidays.
If I were to do the project again, I’d block out every evening and weekend for two weeks to work only on the cabinets. Or I’d get a professional to paint the kitchen in a weekend….
2. You need more paint than you think
I opted to use a gorgeous olive green paint called Constance Moss from Frenchic on my kitchen cabinet doors. I measured up the area I was painting and ordered one tin to cover the whole thing. I’m sure you can see where this is going…
The secret to a durable paint finish is lots of thin coats of paint. I’d very wrongly based my paint calculations on two coats of paint and completely forgotten I needed to paint both sides of each door. I’d run out of paint by the end of day two.
Yes, I could buy more, but the tricky thing with paint is that you often get colour variances between batches. These are very minor, but if you are after that uniform finish, you ideally want to be using paint from the same batch.
I’d realised my mistake quickly when I started painting. I ordered two more tins and did a final coat of paint on all the cabinet doors with those tins for the best possible finish. Even if I hadn’t been bothered about the finish, I could have saved myself alot of anxiety by ordering an extra tin in the first place.
3. Use a top coat
Originally, I didn’t plan to use a top coat on my cabinets; it was the main reason I’d opted for the Frenchic Al Fresco range, as it is self-priming, self-sealing and tough with a chalk matte finish. However, as soon as I hung a couple of my beautifully matte green doors, I immediately saw my nephew run at them with his greasy hands. I knew they’d never look clean again unless I went over them with a satin top coat, which I found is the best paint finish for dark colours in a kitchen.
I had to go through the faff of taking the doors back off, recleaning them, and in a couple of cases, repainting before finally applying a top coat. I bought Polyvine Decorators Varnish in satin from Amazon, which I highly recommend.
Opting to do two more coats on both sides of each cabinet was an extra faff, but the result was so worth it. It has made the gorgeous green paint look richer, bounced more light around the kitchen and most importantly, it shows zero finger marks.
You can pick up the varnish in flat matt and gloss if you are looking for a different finish. However, my advice stays the same; even if the paint you’re using says you don’t need a sealant or top coat, I’d still consider one. You’ll never be as aware of how bashed kitchen cabinets get as after you’ve painted them yourself. I’d plan for those extra two coats of security from the start to help protect all your hard work.
I don’t regret painting my kitchen myself, as it was the only way I could afford to completely transform it. However, it is far from a quick fix.
I’d recommend you make sure you’re fully prepared with more than enough time to do the job well before committing to this project yourself.
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