Recently, my husband, David, and I painted our kitchen. You can read more about that (and how tried out the trend of color blocking) here.

We were happy with the results, but the walls made the cabinets and countertops look even more outdated by comparison. I now understand how one home-improvement project can quickly lead to another. We decided to get started on our next project—painting the cabinets.

This is a rather time-consuming project, but it’s worth it! The key is to do the prep work properly. All that sanding and taping and dusting can take a while, and they’re steps you may be tempted to skip, but don’t—they’ll ensure your cabinets end up with a great paint job that lasts a long time. (Warning: This is a pretty lengthy, detailed explanation—but better to be thorough than to leave you with questions!)

The first task at hand was picking new hardware. We wanted a satin nickel finish, which we didn’t currently have, so we’d need to replace both the handles and the hinges. It didn’t take long to find handles we liked, but the hinges were a bit trickier. We wanted to match the existing ones so we could avoid drilling new holes. It took some time, but we finally found what we were looking for.

(Note: If you can’t find hardware that fits, or if you have a particular handle, knob or hinge you want to use, just use wood putty to fill in the existing holes. Once the putty dries, sand the area to smooth it out so it’s even with the rest of the surface. For our handles, the current holes were 3” apart, which is pretty standard, so we had multiple options when it came to choosing those.)

We decided to try out the new hardware on one of the doors to make sure it fit as it was supposed to. It looked great (well, except for the wood that needs to be sanded, primed and painted).

Before we began this project, we did some research on painting cabinets. We learned there are a variety of ways to go about the process. We took what we’d learned and adapted it to best fit our kitchen and our schedule.

The first step was to label the doors, drawers and frames. We used painters’ tape and a Sharpie to assign a number to each door and drawer (19 in all). We put the corresponding number on the frame of each cabinet or drawer. (Make sure you also label hardware and store it in Ziploc bags if you plan to reuse the handles or knobs you already have. Even if it’s all the same, it’s sometimes easiest to put the hardware back on its original door or drawer.)

We removed each door from the frame and the hardware from the doors.

We set up shop in the garage because it was easy to close off from the rest of the house. (That dust spreads easily!)

We spread out a drop cloth and put the doors on top of it. We sanded them one by one, with David sanding the surfaces (front and back) with a palm sander (you can get one of these from your local hardware store) and me sanding the edges with a sanding block. We both wore masks and safety glasses while we sanded to keep the dust out of our faces. We also opened the garage part of the way to allow for a little extra ventilation and to give the dust somewhere to go so it wouldn’t stay trapped in the garage.

We used 60-grit sandpaper (a lower number means a more coarse surface, while a higher number means a smoother, finer surface) to rough up both the fronts and backs of the cabinets and remove the finish. The cabinets are 30 years old and original to the condo, and while they’re made of sturdy, solid, real wood that’s in great shape, they’ve also never been restained or painted. The hardware has never been changed. They’ve been opened and closed a lot over the past 30 years, so there’s plenty of oils and grease built up on them, which meant the sanding took some work.

It took a couple of evenings working after work, but we got all the doors and drawers sanded. After we finished each door, we wiped it down with a very damp paper towel to remove the dust and then dried it with a dry paper towel or rag. If we saw any still-shiny areas, we knew the finish hadn’t come off completely, so we resanded those spots, then wiped it down again.

After a quick run to our local hardware store to get some tack cloths, we used those to remove any remaining dust from the cabinets.

Next, we headed inside to sand the cabinet frames in the kitchen.

We moved the stove and refrigerator out a little from the wall so we could more easily get to the smaller cabinets above. We taped a large drop cloth over the window in front of the sink (that isn’t a window looking outside, but a window into the family room) and covering the entrance to the kitchen in order to keep dust out of the rest of the condo.

Again, David used the palm sander and I used a sanding block to work together to sand the frames.

Parts of the frames were made of wood veneer. Since this is just a thin sheet of wood, you have to be careful not to sand it down too far, or you’ll go right through the wood. Because of this, we used a higher-grit, finer sandpaper on the frames. We went over the laminate (on the sides of the cabinets) lightly with the sanding block, just roughing the surface up slightly so the primer and paint would better stick. After the sanding was complete, we wiped it down with a damp cloth, dried it, then followed up with a tack cloth to make sure we’d gotten all the dust.

(Note: We chose not to paint the insides of the cabinets. We knew it would be tricky and time-consuming, and we were afraid of what the paint might do to our dishes if for some reason it didn’t dry properly or if we left a bunch of little nicks on the insides. Plus, we liked the two-toned look of the dark contrasting with the white of the outside.)

Finally, it was time to prime and paint! Stay tuned for another post on how we went about that.