Painting Laminate Kitchen Cupboards

Finally I have my pictures on my lap top so that I can insert as I type.  First I have to say I've done this before...but with classic white.  Our kitchen floor is a tan linoleum.  It also is dated, and actually not even in good shape...but certainly livable.  In pictures it actually looks yellow, when in fact it is tan.  To replace our kitchen flooring...not only would it be a pain and messy....but it would mean we would have to change flooring in the living room and the stairs going down to the basement...that's why we chose note to replace the kitchen floor....unless we were gutting the kitchen/dinette.  To get back to my cupboards....I love, love white cupboards...clean and bright...have painted two previous kitchen cupboards white, I love the look so much.  BUT...if we had gone white cupboards in this house....it would have made the floors look worse than they already are.  These 70's laminate cupboards....were only laminated on the front (and of course the sides)...,they were painted a flat dark brown on the back of the doors.  I had never seen that before....but because they were dark brown, I was able to take a door and place it against stainless steel, and our flooring, and it was then that I thought...let's go espresso.  It's a very popular colour, and then we would be able to 'putty' the hole in the middle of the door....and I also thought that if the paint chips, the chip would show a oaky brown....a chip would stand out way more on a white door...I've been there, done that.  Painting kitchen cupboards are so reasonable that new replacements....even refacing..but painting is definitely a temporary thing.  It did help us sell one house though....as I'm sure these cupboards will ultimately help us sell this house also.

So here's what I started with....minus the knob...I never thought of blogging all this....

Then these are the supplies I had...actually this is what we did before we even touched them with paint..

• Made a map or a chart of each cupboard door, and gave it a letter.
• When each door was taken off I sticky noted the letter of the door until all doors were down/off.
• Removed all hardware....when each hinge was taken off I marked the letter of the door under where the hinge was with a permanent marker...under each hinge, just in case we couldn't make out what the letter was.
• Then we covered each of those letters with green painters masking tape.
• Each door was washed and scrubbed with Lestoil....we did this twice...especially the scrubbing.  All grease has to be off your painting surface.
• Then we (my husband and I) took sanding blocks and lightly sanded each door, edges and all and the cupboard frames and boxes.
• Then we wiped everything down completely....we had fifteen doors...we will have more once our carpenter brings us back our doors that he has had to repurpose.
• This only took half a day....since our kitchen is relatively small.
• AT THIS POINT YOU COULD PUT ONE COAT OF PRIMER ON ALL PAINTING SURFACES....A VERY GOOD PRIMER....THAT IS WHAT IS RECOMMENDED.  WE CHOOSE NOT TO AS WE HAD VERY OLD CUPBOARDS AND WE SANDED ANY SHEEN THAT WAS LEFT ON THEM.
• First I painted all the boxes and frames....then covered our new counter top with drop cloths, sheets and we prepared a painting surface....put our leaf into our table, brought in saw horses....all doors were front side down...so I could easily roll on one coat of our melamine paint which I did in that one day.  Once your cupbaords are prepped your first coat of paint goes on very fast.  I used a 1 1/2 " angle brush for the frames and we used a small dense roller.
• Waited till the next morning and I put the second coat of base colour on the frames and boxes.
• We then turned all the cupbaords so we could paint the sides and front.  Knowing that since they were dark brown already on the back any chips we would touch up once hung...we had to leave more space around each cupboard so we could access the sides.  The second day we only put one coat of base colour on the fronts and sides of each cupboard and drawer.
• Day three we put a second coat of base on each side and front of the cupboard doors and drawers.
• On day four I prepared the glaze mixture for antiquing and graining.