we have just purchased a house that has the white melamine front with a strip of oak along the bottom of the cabinet. i was thinking of just replacing the doors to update the kitchens look or to paint them. my husband is leery of painting the cupboards, he thinks it will look tacky. has anyone painted these type of cupboards with success?
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I am doing mine this weekend and kind of nervous haha
bumpity bump bump again for Buela...hope these help
bump for buela
We did a "shaker" type of look on our melamine cabinets. Basically we added panel mould to each door, then put beadboard inside each panel. We primed and painted over everything, including the wood strip - looks amazing!
sorry for the delay. We got it color matched at HD, Quart of the CIL Melamine - pure white - 3310.
Colorant OZ 48 96
C Yellow Oxid 0 2 0
L Raw Umber 0 3 0
Good Luck!
Hi Sass, you helped me with an equivalent for Edwardian Linen, which response is lost now after the server got changed. Could you please give me the formula again ? Thanks a lot !
Hi Sass, what is the paint & color that you used ? I am looking for something similar to Edwardian Linen for painting my kitchen cabinets. Thank you !
DH just painted our ensuite vanities with melamine paint - color very close to RL Edwardian Linen...and what a transformation! We orginally did it as a temp thing till we'd have the budget to replace them, but I think they may be permanent.
Go for it!
i'm so interested in what you ended up doing with your melamine cabinets, I have the exact same. Could you trim them with moulding & make them look like shaker style and then paint with melamine. If so how do you get the trim to lay flat over the oak strip because it has grooves and is not flat.
[B]we have just purchased a house that has the white melamine front with a strip of oak along the bottom of the cabinet. i was thinking of just replacing the doors to update the kitchens look or to paint them. my husband is leery of painting the cupboards, he thinks it will look tacky. has anyone painted these type of cupboards with success? [/B]
an apartment we lived in had grey/blue doors with the wooden strip at the bottom. I HATED the colour so i got some light beige melamine paint and painted the blue/grey out. It looked much warmer.
It was a little work, a light sanding & wash with TPS but hell, i wasn't going to look at those things anymore and I wasn't going to pay for new cupboards.
In our new house, I painted our kitchen counter with black melamine paint. Just don't cut stuff on it because it chips. This is temp until we can afford to change the counter.
It all comes down to money. Save money & work a little OR put out the cash.
GO FOR IT
I have painted these cabinets and they look good when they are done. I had the same cabinets in my kitchen and I was not a big fan of the wooden strip. I pryed this off and used iron-on veneer to cover the hole in the bottom of the door. I fastened 1 inch panel moulding about 2 inches from the edge of the door to give it a raised panel effect. The door was lowered to line up with the bottom of the cabinet and I filled the gap created at the top with crown moulding. Let me know if you would like to see a finished photo of the kitchen.
I am happy with bookcases I painted to match my walls. I found that the paint really smells for quite awhile and the longer you let each coat cure before handling, the harder it gets. I did all my painting in the garage over about 3 weeks and even that wasn't long enough to get rid of the smell. But it was a cheap alternative to new ones.
If you don't mind the white too much, why not just paint the wood trim on the doors, maybe a nice bright accent colour ! White looks so clean and fresh... I'm actually painting my 20 year old wood cabinets a nice cream to show off the mustard yellow walls !
There are before and after photos of a kitchen that sounds like yours. If you want to take a look, go to www.hgtv.com and go to their message boards/chat area. Once there, click the "Remodeling" forum, and then "Kitchen and Bath". There is a post that's currently on page 2 with this heading:
"Updated ideas for dated European cabinets-pics attached"
The lady who posted the pictures is called pearly_whites, and she has done an outstanding job. She also explained how she changed the look by removing the oak strip, adding molding, etc.
One more suggestion I have is to do a price comparison with your husband. Check out new doors, and compare the cost to that of materials you would use if you gave the cabinets a lift yourselves with paint. Sometimes the total price of a couple of cans of paint can bring out a "nothing to lose" attitude. (you would likely be looking at new hardware with either option, so that part is even) If he is concerned about the finished look of the paint finish, then do a test run on something less important than your kitchen cabinets. In my case, I have some bathroom cabinets that I am more likely to replace in a couple of years, so I will paint those for practice before I paint my kitchen cabinets that I want to keep.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
i cannot speak from experience but i know that many people on this forum have and have done it successfully as long you do it correctly. that means lots of prep work! sand all surfaces, wipe clean and prime with a good primer. use good paintbrushes/rollers and you will be very happy in the end.
btw, i know exactly what kind of cupboards you are talking about (had them in my last apt.). i think you should paint out the wooden strip to match your doors and install some really nice hardware pulls...any ideas on colour scheme? we can definitely help you out there too, so welcome!!
I know that sometimes people will paint out the oak strip, so that the cupboards are all the same colour. When we got our house, we had plain white melamine cupboards, with grey plastic pulls. My husband put molding around the doors, replaced the pulls with Mexican ceramic knobs and painted them all white. They look much much better.