In this video, Philip demonstrates how to best paint a bathroom vanity. If only it really took the length of the video, I think we would all do it. It is very thorough and looks very tedious with the perfect brush strokes. As long as you have the correct tools, I think you can save yourself some time and money to make a different look and feel in your bathroom instead of a whole new remodel. Give it a whirl. Remember, it is only paint and you can always paint over any mistakes that may occur. Having a steady hand is key. When I paint, I find myself using a lot of water to immediately remove some smudges. If you don’t have the patience, consider installing a new vanity. It may be worth your sanity!
Transcription:
Hi. I’m Philip Mason with today’s tips of the trade. How do I repaint old household cabinets? Some of the items you’re going to need to get the job started are a sanding deglosser, a really high-quality primer, and a good quality paint brush, normally I like to use oil base paint brushes because they give us a better finish, one nice clean rag, and some paper to mask around the area you’re going to be working in.
Two of the types of cabinets that we’re going to be looking at … one of them is a factory finished cabinets that will require the sanding deglosser to go ahead and take off the surface so that you’ll have a good medium for the paint to stick to. For those of you that are going to be painting your cabinets that are already pre-painted, what you’ll need to do there is simply just paint over that with a good heavy duty primer and then your paint.
One of the first things that I like to do before starting a project like this is to make sure that I put masking paper down before I start. Just a little bit of masking paper and some tape will prevent any of the chemicals we’re going to be using from spilling on the floor.
The first step we’re going to be doing is to apply this sanding deglosser to the surfaces of the cabinets. This material is relatively simple to use, it’s fairly clean, and it doesn’t take long to make it work. The first thing we’re going to do is take our clean rag that we’ve got here and we’re going to take it and rub it on the surfaces gently. Soak the rag pretty well so that while you’re putting it on the surface, it leaves a nice film on there. We’ll apply that liberally to all the surfaces we’re going to be repainting. What happens is that deglosser will begin to sort of etch away at the finish of the cabinet. Once you’ve put it on and wiped it off, you’ll want to give it about ten minutes to sit so that it’s dried out well enough for you to go ahead and put your primer coat on.
Step two is the primer coat. As I mentioned before, it’s really important to have a high quality primer. You might want to ask your paint rep what’s the best product to use for the type of surface you’re going to be painting on. I use this product because it’s a one coat product and it sticks to any surface.
To apply the primer, I recommend using a very high quality paintbrush. An oil based paint brush typically is what I use because it gives your surface a really nice finish once you’ve applied the paint. When putting the primer on, you don’t want to add too much primer to the paintbrush because you’ll end up getting a lot of drips. I usually put anywhere between three quarters to one inch of primer on the brush before I start. Then, what you want to do is you want to do nice even equal strokes up and down without too much paint in there to cause streaking. Remember, this is a single coat primer, so you don’t need to put so much on there that you cover the entire surface and you see no colors through it; just enough to make sure that you’ve given a coat that the paint can stick to once you start to paint.
The third and final step is the application of the finished coat of paint. There are two types of paint available. One is a latex or water based paint, the other one we’re going to be using is an oil based paint. I like the oil based paint because it allows you to put a smoother coat of paint on with a much harder finish and that’ll come in handy when you’re using paint around cabinets that get a lot of wear and tear.
Like I talked about before, the idea here is to put less paint on the brush. Three quarters of an inch is typically what you’ll need to start out with. If you need to add a little more, do so, but If not, just stick with three quarters to a half inch. Three quarters of an inch of paint on the brush with smooth even strokes will give you all that you’ll need to get a beautiful finished product. Nice and even. As you can see, the paint’s going on very, very smooth with very few streaks.
We’ve just painted the surface, here, with our nice even three quarter of inch limitations on the paint. When you get to the corners, cut that in half so that you don’t glob up too much paint in the corners. Nice even strokes in the corners and as you can see, it fills in just beautifully without having drips or runs that you’ll have to come back later on and brush over.
As you can see, with three easy steps, preparation, primer, and paint, you can make those old household cabinets look new again.