How to Buy Kitchen Cabinets

After you pay a deposit, the kitchen cabinets are outsourced to a manufacturer. A 10-foot by 10-foot kitchen is often used as a benchmark for pricing and comparing kitchen cabinet costs.

Most people making floor cabinets skip the top piece since they’ll be installing countertops instead. Screwing through cabinet frames and into wall studs, continue the rest of the wall cabinets on both sides of the corner cabinet.

Can you just paint over cabinets or should you strip them?

Read more about Custom kitchen cabinets here.

Connecting the Base Cabinets

Use the roller to apply enamel paint to the large flat surface where possible. Make sure to follow the underlying structure of the cabinet or door with the brush. Where a rail butts into a stile, for instance, paint the rail first, overlapping slightly onto the stile, then paint the stile before the overlap dries. Starting at the top of the cabinet, brush on the primer across the grain, then “tip-off”—pass the brush lightly over the wet finish in the direction of the grain. Always tip-off in a single stroke from one end to the other. As soon as it sets, remove the excess with a sharp paint scraper.

With sandwich bags and an indelible marker, label each bag with the hinge’s original location, and be sure to include the screws. Remove contents from the drawers, then remove the drawers. The best quality kitchen cabinets are those that are made of 3/8-inch or thicker plywood for the cabinet boxes. Hinges on the cabinet doors are soft-closing, hidden Euro-style hinges. Drawers are joined by dovetail construction rather than with staples, and they slide in and out on undermount soft closing drawer glides. While there are professional handypeople who are skilled with a paintbrush, most aren’t spending much time painting, let alone painting kitchen cabinets.

Line up your cabinets against the wall and mark the locations of wall studs on the back. Take a drill and create pilot holes into the back of the cabinet where the studs are located. Drill pilot holes at both the top and bottom of your cabinet so they’re ready to go when you hang them. If you’re using roughly the same shade as the existing color, two coats ought to do the job. Painting over a dark finish with a light color is tougher and could require three coats. Sand any profiled surfaces with a medium-grit sanding sponge.