It’s not surprising that homeowners create troubles when they re-paint their kitchen cabinets without first preparing their workspace and materials. If you don’t mark the cabinet parts first, you just might spend frustrating hours trying to match them up when re-installing them. And, if you don’t carefully prepare your kitchen workspace, you’ll end up with a nasty clean-up job.
So, before you rush headlong into self-inflicted misery, clear out your cabinets and remove nearby small appliances. And, by all means, get everything off of your kitchen countertops. You’re going to paint your cabinet doors and drawer fronts in a separate, clean workspace with ample ventilation. However, if you’re going to paint the boxes themselves, you’ll need to:
• Mask windows, walls, and backsplashes with painter tape
• Drape your sink and countertops
• And lay a drop-cloth on the floor.
Marking Cabinet Parts for Assembly
Numbering each cabinet door and drawer front is essential prep work. Use a small tag from a strip of masking tape to number each cabinet and corresponding door, and each drawer front with corresponding drawer. I like the idea of putting the same identifying number on a zip-lock bag and put the screws, pulls, and other hardware in it. That’s a great way of creating sets for re-installation.
Once the doors and drawer fronts are tagged and the hardware is off, you can begin the prep work of washing the cabinet parts with soap or TSP.
Now you can patch the dents or cracks sand with 120-grit paper to ready them for paint. It sounds like a simple process, and it is. Only poor planning can create a nightmare when it’s time to put everything back where it belongs!
