I used STIX Bonding Primer and Cabinet Coat on my rental kitchen. They are both available at BM. Worked great. I especially loved the Cabinet Coat-it really leveled out so nicely.

I believe a lot of people also recommend the BM Advance although I have never used it.

I don't remember the smell being terrible but the STIX definitely has an odor but not enough to make you leave the house like the old days of oil paints.

That’s a recipe for disaster. Slapdash painters shouldn’t touch cabinets with house paint.

You need to find someone who finishes cabinets. With a conversion varnish. In a clean room. Not inside your house. Which is what a real custom cabinet maker would do.

@ Sophie we are painting cabinets not building the Sistine chapel. This is a house that’s already flooded once & may very well flood again. Somewhere between disaster and Ideal is a place called good enough and that’s what I’m going for. If you have any specific information about advance versus pro classic I’d love to hear it though.

No way?!? You guys painted all this cabinetry yourselves?! It looks AMAZING! I’m definitely going with the BM Advance then!!!

I've heard that the BM Advance is very good. The durability will really depend on the wood that is underneath. Good thing about it that it is water based so it won't yellow, and if you need to touch it up it will not look terrible (vs. oil based paints that will yellow). I recently sprayed my new cabinets with Sherwin Williams KEM AQUA Plus. The paint is awesome and is NKBA certified. You do have to spray it so if you don't have a sprayer this wouldn't work. For the primer I sprayed the cabinets with Zinnser Sealcoat (shellac). Both the primer and the topcoat dried in about 30 minutes, So i was able to do the whole set in 1.5 day's.

The only downside I recall from BM Advance is that it has an unusually long cure time. I could be remembering wrong, though.

Oh, we did use the advance primer as well, and our wood was new build maple. Maple takes paint well.

We used SW Pro Classic in our kitchen in a house we sold last fall.... we only lived in it about 3 months after the kitchen update, but I thought it looked great and wore well, especially for our investment in the project (new granite, a few cans of paint, and re colored the grout---all in for well under 2k) once the paint had a little time to really harden, it wiped clean really well and was pretty dang durable. We have a dog notorious for counter surfing and "helping" in the kitchen. Her claws were fine on it and we cook a lot- and my husband always made a mess. Sounds like both SW and BM have longer cure times, but worth it to just be careful for a few weeks than spend a fortune on a kitchen project on a budget.

Also--we used khilz adhesion primer, but we were painting over wood finished cabinets, so I don't think that is the right primer for your project.

Also try not to stare at the glaring orange hardwoods....

I just did a bathroom vanity and I used Killz Odorless Oil-Based Stain Blocker as the primer and Behr Alkyd Satin Enamel on the advice of the lady in the paint department. I did not use a a top coat. I'm monitoring it to see if I need one - but so far, I haven't. I rolled the majority of it and used a Zibra Square brush for the beveled areas on the doors. I'm very happy with the results and am already considering what color to use on the Master Bath vanity.

Yes, the cure time was kind of long with the BM advance too. It takes like a month to really harden. In fact, my hubby had to re-paint two of the grey drawers on my island next to my stools. I had used some leather cleaner and conditioner on the stools and, like a dummy, didn't pay attention to overspray. Of course, to my horror I saw all these weird looking drops all over two of the drawers. What did I do? My next mistake was grabbing a dry microfiber cloth to wipe up the spray (after I tried wiping it with a damp paper towel and the spots didn't go away). To my immediate relief, the spots went away... but then I realized I had actual scratches in the paint!!! It had only cured for about two weeks by this time. Fortunately, hubby was still in the process of painting other parts of the kitchen and he had some of the grey paint left over... so I had to lightly sand it down (just a scratch coat) and he was able to put another layer of paint on the fronts of the two drawers. That time I made SURE to let it cure for a month! LOL! The picture above that shows those drawers on my island were taken after that repair was made. ;)

I have read that SW Pro-Classic is great. I personally chose BM Advance. There is a learning curve with it, but it is wonderfully self-leveling, and cures to a really hard finish. I primed with Zinsser BIN Shellac base, as my cabs were knotty pine shellac finish - tough to cover those knots, and paint has a tough time sticking to shellac.

Thank you all for your responses. Love the pics. Leaning toward SW for proximity and seems they are fairly equitable. I will post pics when it’s done. Thanks again!

Insl-X's Cabinet-Coat is better. C2 has an awesome Cab-paint too. For UNREAL results....FPE's ECO-Brilliant.

Faron

https://www.paintingrochester.com/blog/cabinet-coat-and-benjamin-moore-advance-review

What an informative thread! About to tackle the same project. Do you need to sand the cabinets before priming? Thx! And I’m dying to see the final photos!!

Cabinet Coat and BM Advance are my go to. I wont use anything else.

Jen- yes, sand first. If you don't prep (aka clean and sand) correctly then the paint (no matter how good it is) wont adhere, especially long term.

The most important prep is to make sure oils from cooking and fingers are removed by washing. "Scuff sanding" is always a good idea. You do NOT want to sand through the old finish, especially when using water soluble finishes. Also, many of these new finishes designed for cabinet finishing are self priming over a sound existing finish. They have excellent adhesion to an existing finish, but will not seal bare wood.

We painted our cabinets with Ace Hardware Alkatex. I did a lot of research before deciding on this paint. It was a brighter white than the Sherwin Williams, which had a gray tint to it. It didn't take a long time to cure, but it smelled really bad. We used a sprayer on the cabinet boxes and then hand rolled the doors. They look really nice and not one bit of the paint has chipped in the 6.5 years since.

http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12664179