Are you thinking about painting cabinets in your home?

We have cabinets in our family room and for several years I’ve been planning to paint them. I finally found some time to work on them and finished them this week! Because I’ve had lots of time to think about it I’ve had several different ideas for these cabinets. I landed in painting them blue and adding hardware.

Annie Sloan has several blues and I changed my mind a few times on which blue to use. I hadn’t used Annie Sloan Old Violet before so I bought a sample size and tried it on a smaller piece. I was worried it might have a lavender feel to it and I didn’t want any purple undertones. Although it’s call Old Violet it doesn’t look purple. It’s actually a lovely medium blue that adds some color but isn’t overwhelming.

The cabinets in the family room are the same as the ones in our kitchen. They are oak and were stained a yellow/orange color. I painted my kitchen cabinets and was ready to get rid of the yellow/orange color in the family room as well.

Just your basic cabinets. Time for a change.

I still wanted the top to be a stained wood but I wanted a different stain color so I sanded them down.

I usually sand things outside but obviously I couldn’t do that. So there was a mess to clean up after I blew saw dust all over my family room. 🙄 I tired a couple of different stains and ended up using Minwax Early American. I used 2 coates of polyurethane to seal it and then started painting. Cabinets take some time to paint. This project took several days. There’s a lot of surface space and it also involves taking the doors off and the drawers out. If there had been hardware I would have removed that as well. I know not everyone paints the inside of the doors but I do and here’s why. When I open a cabinet I want it to feel finished. The insides of my cabinets are white so I didn’t paint them.

I didn’t paint the backs of the drawer fronts because they are attached to the drawer and you don’t easily see it like the inside of a cabinet door. If you are painting your cabinets you can decide how you want to handle this.

Next I had to decide on drawer pulls. I debated on adding gold or black drawer pulls. I decided on black because I generally go more traditional. I also felt the black was more lasting. I have gold accents in my home but I think black will be easier to work with as styles change. I’ll be adding the same drawer pulls to my kitchen cabinets. Adding these pulls was also time consuming. Anytime you have to add a couple of holes to furniture or cabinets there’s a lot of measuring and double checking. No one wants to patch a mistake.

A lot goes into changing cabinets but a little paint and elbow grease gives you a whole new look.

I painted these without distressing them. I sealed the  halk paint with Annie Sloan Clear Wax. I think the paint color and stain color compliment each other well and fit with the look of the room.

Painting cabinets will take you some time but you’ll save a lot of money compared to the price of replacing them. And you can customize them to get the look you want. It’s definitely worth the effort.

If you’re thinking about painting your cabinets I hope this is helpful. If you have any other questions I can answer, leave a comment below.

Thanks for taking a minute to read my blog. Take a minute to brows around for more tips on painting with chalk paint!

Cindy