How I painted my cabinets

I had a couple of people ask me how I did my cabinets, so I thought I'd do a little "tutorial" rather than just tell them becuase I had a friend that tried to explain to me the painting technic the first time I tried it, and she finally had to come over and actually show me how to do it because they looked so bad. So you definitely need pictures. Also, I needed some motivation to finish my cabinets upstairs, and this provided me with the extra motivation that I needed to get those cabinets done!
*Disclaimer* I don't know if this is the "right" way to paint cabinets, but so far I have had no problems!


Supplies needed: Course sandpaper, rag, base color paint, brown color of paint, glaze, paintbrush, tape.
I used 150 grit (fine) sandpaper, but I would have used 80 (course) if I had had it. I used the 80 grit in my kitchen and I think it did a better job for these purposes.

I used Behr paint which you can get at home depot. I think all my paint was eggshell finish. I'm sure any sheen would work, just depending on if you want more glossy or less glossy cabinets.

My base coat is called "Bavarian Cream" (1 quart)
My Brown accent color is called "Melted Chocolate" (1 quart was plenty)
I usually base some of my color choice decision on the name of the paint itself. Aren't Bavarian Cream and Melted Chocolate nice names? Maybe it's just the pregnant girl talking.

Anyway, you will want to buy the faux glaze, too. You mix it with the brown and then it prolongs the drying time of the paint so that you have more time to work with it. You mix 4 parts glaze to 1 part paint, but it will tell you exactly how to mix it on the back of the can. 1 quart was plenty for me, I still have tons left over.

Something I should have used but didn't is this: Kilz primer/sealant. Also available at Home depot, I should have painted all of my cabinets with this first. (After sanding, but before my base coat.) My paint chipped off in a couple of places and I think that this would have prevented it. I just get too impatient to paint a whole extra coat of this, and then wait for it to dry. It would have been better, though.



Ok, let's begin! First sand all surfaces that are going to be painted. Pay extra attention to any places where the paint is peeling. The point is to just rough up the surface so that the paint will adhere better.

Next, with a damp cloth wipe all surfaces of the cabinet, removing the dust you just made by sanding.


The next step will be to paint, so tape off all areas surrounding the cabinets that you do not want to get paint on. After taping, this is where I would do a coat of that primer.


I'm sure you all have painted before, but just in case you have not, you only want to dip the tip of the brush into the paint. If not, it gets way messy.

Ok, so paint the entire suface of the cabinets with the base color. I did two coats on mine. Wait until the base coat is good and dry, and then...

This is my favorite part. Paint the brown(which is actually glaze + brown paint) just in the edges, or wherever you want the majority of your color to be. It doesn't have to be perfect by any means, just slosh some brown paint on there.

This is the tricky part, but don't worry, it's not that tricky. So all you have to do is wipe the majority of the brown paint off. Get your rag a little damp, and beginning in a circular motion, begin to wipe off all the paint that you just put on. If it looks bad, just keep wiping. The paint will stay wet enough to work with for several minutes. Sometimes I had to get my rag a bit more wet, and then it would wipe better. Wipe the middle of the cabinet a bit too, so it gets a little color as well.

Here is the cabinet mostly done. I ended up wiping off even more of the brown a little bit later.

On the side of the cabinet I used the same technic. I've also done this on a wall, and I liked how it turned out there too. Again, just slosh some brown paint on there. If it were any bigger of an area, like on a large wall, I would have divided it into sections, and just work maybe a 3x3 area at a time, and then blend the areas together as I went.

Begin wiping. Again, you will be wiping most of the paint off. This is what it started to look like after just a few wipes with the rag. Just keep wiping. I think it looks best if you leave it a little darker in the corners and on the edges.
After a lot of wiping:
Ta-duh! The finished product. Thanks to Alecia. ( The girl who told me how)

I am totally an amateur, but I had fun with it, and generally liked how they turned out.
Hopefully this looong post was understandable. Let me know if you have any questions!

And, of course, little Tate. He unfortunately woke up from his nap before I was finished. He is such a great help with this sort of thing. Yep, that white stuff near his mouth is paint.

TWO LITTLE BOYS!

It looks like I am going to be way outnumbered! Tate is happy to announce that he will soon have a BROTHER! Chris and I really did think it was a girl, but now that we know it's a boy it will take some getting used to the idea! I honestly was a little dissapointed at first because I had been getting really excited about buying cute girly clothes and making all that frilly stuff. But now that I think about, it I remember when I was younger I always pictured myself the mother of two or three little boys. The baby looks healthy so far, so hopefully things keep going smoothly. I am kind of a silent worrier about that.
I gained a whopping 7 pounds this month. holy HEIFER! My pre pregnancy weight with this baby was less than I was with Tate, so I still have 30 lbs to go before I get to where I ended when Tate was born. I don't think I'll get as big with this pregnancy. At least I hope I don't gain 30 more pounds! However, if I gain 7 lbs for the next 4 months, then I'm right on track-geez! I'm starting to finally get a little belly. People always told me I would show sooner with my 2nd pregnancy, but so far- not really. I still hide it pretty well. I just look thicker in my waist, if you know what I mean. I think my belly will really "blossom" this week or next, though. Maybe I'll talk Chris into taking a picture.
Things I am excited for: They will be 18 mos apart, so they will be 1 year apart in school.
I am excited for them to be wild and run around the house and wrestle together. I'm excited for them to be really naughty and get into trouble and messes together when they are both toddlers. I'm excited for them to play on the same team for t-ball or basketball or whatever they want to do. I know they will get into fights, but I hope that we can raise them to be the best little buddies!

Catch up

I feel like a blogger failure. I've been wanting to post, but I feel so far behind I have been putting it off. First off, if you look to the right I have a poll to vote on sex of our baby. My ultrasound is next Monday, so we'll see. I'm excited.


This past weekend we went camping with my family for a couple days, and then on Monday we went to Pinetop for a team roping thing with Chris' parents. Tate HATED camping. I thought he was so grumpy the whole time. One bright spot for him, admist all the agony, was this ear of corn straight from my grandma's garden:
He also liked this dirt bike. He just wanted to sit on it forever. Chris actually took him for a ride, and he didn't like that as well. He was more content to just sit. Tate is all boy. It is so funny.
He loves to be in the middle of whatever is going on, and he loves tools. He has also turned into a master copycat. If you can imagine, Tate was a HUGE help when we were fixing our new house.Here is a picture of Tate and Chris' dad, Stan, on Labor Day. At the roping Chris won a little money, but his dad actually won a saddle. The saddle winners get their pictures put in this little roper's newspaper called The Jackpot, and Stan wanted Tate to be in the picture with him.
Maybe I haven't posted for so long because we moved? Right now this is actually my new favorite part of the house. I found this light for a good price at Lowe's because it was a former floor model or whatever. The picture doesn't do it justice, but it looks like a tarnished platinum or something.

The home was bank owned before we bought it, so it needed quite a bit of work. I repainted the cupboards in the kitchen:
We had to get a new sink:

Below that pic is a before picture of the stairs. The whole house looked like this on the walls. There were boogers EVERYWHERE. It was disgusting. This is my favorite room; the loft. Our previous house didn't have a very good room for kids to play, so I am glad that this one has such a big room. There were several holes in the wall like you see in this picture that had to be repaired as well. We turned it into the tv area/play room. The carpet was gross, and we had to get that replaced as well. Seriously it seemed that any time anything was spilt, the previous owners just left it there. The carpets had huge spots, the pantry took forever to clean because there was unidentified goop everywhere. There were splatter marks all over the kitchen... you get the picture. And to top it all off, all of the toilets had those soft, sqishy, plastic toilet seats. Disgusting.


This the kitchen/family room, as looking from the stairs, and then below that picture you can see the laminate floor that replaced the tile, and you can kind of see the new carpet. I love this laminate floor, but it is much more difficult to take care of than I hoped. Bummer.

So yeah, that's about it. We're moved in, and we LOVE living in town. We have seen a huge decrease in the amount of gas we're buying, and Tate and I get to hang out with Chris more than we did in Casa Grande, since he doesn't spend 1 1/2 hours driving everyday. It's glorious.