Anyone had any luck painting their cabinets?

Sand it down, clean it really well after sanding, then use B-I-N Shellac Primer. My wife used to do this as a side job, and that worked with plenty of kitchen and bathroom cabinets.

Shellac Primer

quote:

---

light sanding? medium sanding?

---

The quality of any paint job almost always comes down to the prep work. The more old paint you are able to sand off, the better the end product will be. A random orbital sander will help with a lot of it, but the parts that the orbital can't reach will require a little elbow grease.

Kitchen cabinets, especially those near the oven and stove are going to have some grease on them no matter how much you clean them.

My first step would be to mix hot water with TSP (Tri-Sodium Phosphate) that you can get from any hardware or big box store.

Wipe the cabinets down with that to remove any grease from the surfaces and rinse with clean water when done.

Let the cabinets dry and then, like already mentioned, it's the prep work that makes a paint job look good. Prep well, make sure all the sanding dust is removed and then prime and paint and I suggest getting your prime half tinted to the finished color.

Ideally, spraying gives a really slick finish, but you can get good results using brushes, but they need to be good brushes, not the $5 off the shelf big box crap. I'm talking Purdy or Wooster brushes made for whatever type paint you plan to use-----oil or latex.

We painted ours several years ago.

Cleaned with TSP
Light sanding
General Finishes Milk paint
With a urethane top coat
HVLP sprayer

Still look new.

I painted mine white 3 years ago and they still look great. They were natural cherry wood previously.
I used a 4 inch micro fiber roller. I lightly sanded everything then applied 2 coats of primer & 3 coats of high quality woodwork paint. I removed all the doors and lined them up in an assembly line on my deck railing and on a large folding table in the garage and painted them one after another. I left the drawers in place and just pulled them out a little to paint them. The rest of the cabinet structure was easy to do. The biggest pain was all the taping.

Make sure whatever paint you use meets KCMA standards. BIN primer usually will provide a good base on top of the old, check it to be sure though.