Painting Cabinet Shelves

The cabinet painting is still basically at a halt. The landlords still say no. However, I still have hope and the next plan is to get an extra box of flooring that we will be using in the bathroom, and then we’ll have enough to do the kitchen too. But, we’ll tell the landlords we can’t do it unless we paint the cabinets. Yellow cabinets do not look good with beautiful gray barn wood looking floors. Hopefully this last resort tactic works. I might just have to paint them anyway, but I rather not.

Since I can’t paint the outside of the cabinets I’ve started painting the insides since they desperately need it too.

This is a different cabinet than I painted, but I had already peeled too much paint off for you to see how dirty it was to start with. I cleaned the shelves really well and they’re still too dingy to be left alone.

You can see here how the paint is peeling. The peeling is worse in some of the other cabinets.

The worst part about the cabinets is that they trapped the smell of food horribly. Even after I cleaned the cabinets and let them air out without food for a while, I could smell it again shortly after I put everything back.

Here is the cabinet I painted with most of the paint peeled off the bottom, and quite a bit off the walls. I peeled as much off as I could before sanding it down and wiping up the dust.

Above is the cabinet with a coat of primer. When I painted the wall trim I didn’t put a coat of primer on it, and I wish I did because it might have helped it from getting dinged up again. I absolutely hate dealing with the peeling paint, so I hope that this primer will cut down on that.

The cabinet with a coat of paint and all dry.

Here are comparison photos of a painted shelf and a non painted shelf. The bottom shelf in both pictures is painted, and the top one is not.

The cabinet is put back together, now I just need to find a better way to organize the spices. I’ll slowly work on painting a shelf or two at a time and hopefully that will keep my mind off wanting to paint the outsides.

I should make decent progress if I don’t get too irritated with having to peel all the paint off. I might, however, get a little grossed out with doing some of the lower cabinets by the sink that are exposed to the pipes inside the wall. Maybe I’ll come up with another project entirely to make them look more finished.

What’s your worst home improvement nightmare? Do you have any tips for organizing spices?

See You Around!

Lauren <3