Sure, people do it. Here's my favorite:

My daughter painted hers herself and they turned out great!

Solid oak cabinets are being painted in record numbers. So the answer is a resounding "Yes". Are you thinking of doing it yourself or would you like a professional to refinish for you?

The professional job can be much more durable in the long run.

We would have them professionally painted.

A good quality professional paint job, with the massive amount of prep work it entails, would be 5-7K average. New cabinets, although 3-4x that figure, afford the opportunity to tweak number of drawers, change to soft close drawer glides, and better quality adjustable shelving, etc. You can adjust the layout as well.

Some of those cabinets look better than others. If you think yours are on the better looking sort, some have refreshed without painting.

My own oak kitchen refresh is in my "my pics" idea book.

Sophie Wheeler, you are right! I just had mine painted(they really needed it) and it was $6000. They did add trim, base cave, and crown, but that part was only $700. They did a good job, sprayed the doors, and I'm happy. I think if someone wanted to save, they could paint the boxes and just have the doors done by a professional.

We did paint our golden oak cabinets five years ago. There had been a lot of bleed through, in spite of using "block", and it was quite the frustrating job for my hubby at times. All of that said, we had gotten a couple of estimates for JUST painting, to the tune of about $4,000. No thank you! So worth it in the end, and the money saved went into our granite.

This is our "after" picture when painting the golden oak cabinetry.

I painted my 1969 oak cabinets for the second time this summer. They didn't need painting, I finally got the energy to try for the perfect color after 7 years living with the wrong color. My sister had her 1970s oak cabinets painted last spring and they are chipping. Prep is key. Somebody has to scrub them down with degreaser and somebody has to sand so the paint can stick. Guessing for paint to already be failing somebody didn't do part of the prep work.

It is more work than painting walls but not really over the top difficult, more tedious and nitpicky. Take down doors, remove hardware, scrub and rinse, sand and wipe frames, doors and drawers. Prime and wait a day. Paint and wait a day. Paint and wait several days for paint to harden enough to handle. Install doors and drawers. Put on hardware. This time they didn't stick at all, last time it took a couple weeks before they stopped sticking. I used a paint conditioner so paint layers were much thinner and paint dried better, learned about that here. I kept a journal and it took a total of 10 days from doors off to doors back on this time. Putting doors back was the hardest task and sanding frames the messiest.

I wouldn't have painted mine in the first place but a couple doors were quite damaged and finish was gone around many of the lower cabinet knobs. I like jhmarie's examples on how to use 'outdated' cabinets in a new way.

Here are some photos from my kitchen . I would like to have the cabinets painted off white and the island a charcoal. The backsplash will be replaced and the rest of the appliances will be Stainless.

Are you planning on having all your woodwork painted white too? You may be heading for a whole house renovation with white and gray. It is very difficult to mix warm wood tones with cool grays. It can be done in small doses - some gray in a countertop or one of the colors in the floor but in large doses warm wood tones and cool grays often look drab together. Blue or green with gray undertones or very dark almost black gray (the charcoal maybe?) - will work, but not just gray. Go with white or cream and you can work with the warm wood tones. Go with gray and get ready to paint everything - and then have it go out of style in ten or so years and you get to start over again. Gray as a major color is usually paired with white or very dark cabinets.

You are painting the cabinets but every interior door is a nice wood paneled door. You can paint them too, but wood moves with changes in temperature and humidity. This cracks the paint at the joints - and doors have lots of joints - so some upkeep along with keeping them clean as white doors show every speck of dust and every scratch. Solid core white doors are usually MDF and of lower value then wood paneled doors.

Most who paint there cabinets are trying to get some more years out of older cabinets or are pining for white. Since your cabinets are pretty, you are probably pining for white - and that is OK. However, you should work with the present tone of your home unless you are ready for a total remodel.

White with wood:

From what I can see, your cabinets look nice.

We got a price on painting the baseboard, Windows,and trim. I'm not opposed to keeping the cabinets the way they are. We will paint the walls too, and change the backsplash. We are going to continue the wood into the family room and refinish the existing hardwood floors.

Of course! You can paint / spray oak kitchen cabinets. The surface preparation is one of the most vital elements in achieving a high bond strength and optimising durability and lifespan.

Original cabinets vs. painted cabinets

I'm with jhmarie...white or off-white will be lovely. I would be VERY careful with gray. You have plenty of oak flooring which casts a yellow/warm tone to anything it touches. Which is fine. Crisp white looks wonderful against oak. Soft white looks rather romantic against oak. Gray can look OK....or it can look hideous.

Getting the gray to work with the oak will be the hardest thing you do in design. It is so tough, a professional designer would be challenged to turn your vision into reality....let alone a DIY colour choice.

As a flooring expert, I work with interior colours all the time. I am not a designer. With my experience with flooring, I would find it massively challenging to get a gray to work with your flooring. It can be done...but it would take a very creative touch (ahem... a designer's touch) to get the right gray to work with your flooring.

Good luck. These cabinets will look VERY handsome when painted out. Very, very handsome.