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madismom5

Should we paint oak cabs white or too much work vs hiring someone to d

madismom5
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

do it?

Comments (5)

  • PRO
    Benjamin Barnett Painting
    8 years ago

    There are two main reasons why it might be easier to hire someone. The first reason is that kitchen cabinets require a lot of work to do them right. In addition to the normal prep involved in say painting a bookshelf, one must degrease cabinets carefully to insure any grease from cooking doesn't interfere with the new paints adhesion. Also all the doors have to be removed (as well as all hinges and hardware so they don't get any paint on them). These extra steps all add up time-wise. The second reason is that it is a huge inconvenience to have your whole kitchen taken apart and unusable for the duration of the project. This can be compounded by the fact that you may be at work during the day and painting at night. This means you would only be able to paint a few hours a night, which means the loss of your kitchen for a longer time. A professional would be there all day every day until the work is done which would translate into less time with your kitchen in chaos. Any other room in the house is not that much of an inconvenience if you cannot use it, but the kitchen is really tough to have out of commission.

    Then there is the dust control. When you are sanding the cabinet frames you need to have good dust control so that no dust gets all over your food or pots and pans in the cabinets. (I am assuming here that you are just painting frames and doors, not the inside of the cabinets.) A pro can quickly cover the inside of the cabinets with plastic, and will have sanders that have Hepa vacuum hookups both of which will insure no dust gets where it shouldn't be.

    I hope that helps.

  • lam702
    8 years ago

    It is a lot of work painting cabinets. I did our bathroom cabinets, which turned out great but was a good amount of work. Surface prep is the key. Of course, bathroom cabinets will not get grease on them like a kitchen cabinet does. And there are a lot more cabinets in the kitchen than a bathroom. We did reface our kitchen cabinets, which required a somewhat similar surface prep. Degreasing took the time, you think your cabinets are clean, but if they are old, they've probably built up some grease that you don't see but will affect adherence of paint or veneers. And we only had the boxes to prep, we bought new doors which were prefinished. Much more work if you are prepping all the boxes and doors too. It just depends on how much you want to spend, the time you want to invest and how long you can put up with the mess of it. Hiring someone will get it done much faster, but you can DIY and do a good job if you take your time and you'll save a good amount of $$$ too. Of course, if you are a sloppy painter, or skip on the all important prep work, you might end up with peeling, chipping paint.

  • madismom5
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    Good points and thank you so much

  • User
    8 years ago

    I had my dark stained oak kitchen cabinets sprayed by a professional. Any part that was removable were taken to their shop to be sprayed. And a tech came with a sprayer to do whatever was permanent (moulding, side panels, etc) They used special formula paint so that cabinets can be easily wiped off. I used Benjamin Moore moonlight white and cabinets came out beautiful.

  • madismom5
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    That is what I want! Thank youi