This Girl’s House

I’m knee deep into the job of painting the kitchen cabinets.  Hope we have the job done by Thansgiving.  Right now I’m doing the most painting in the garage, even as cold as it is.  I misplaced my camera but I’ll post pictures later.  We’re painting the standard builder’s grade cabinets, bittersweet chocolate.  I’ve seen this same Expresso color on cabinets throughout the home stores lately.  Lessons I’ve learned from doing this job include:

• Do a really good sanding job before you start painting.  Don’t just rough them up.  The underlying finish can prevent the paint from sticking and it will later chip off.  I’d rather  have the paint wear off as opposed to chip off, if it’s eventually going to come off. 
• Tape off the areas adjacent to where you will be painting.
• Apparently 3 coats does the job.  In between coats, I use a fine steel wool and buff the paint in and take the shine off.
• Diagram your cabinets on a piece of paper and assign each cabinet a code.  As you take off the doors of each cabinet and pull out the drawers, mark the doors and drawers with the same code.  You can put the code in the hole left by the door hardware. 
• And yes, remove the door hardware and place that in a little baggy marked with the door code.