Prepping Cabinets for Paint – Step 1

Every time I go into my kitchen I let out a sigh of disappointment. My kitchen is really tiny, really grungy, and really outdated. I dream of having pretty white cabinets and counters that come clean. Here is what my kitchen looks like now so you can feel my pain and see how tiny it is 🙁

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

One day I realized that I can have pretty white counters and not so dreadful counter tops. I went digging on Pinterest for ideas on how to update cabinets, counters, and backsplash on the cheap. I decided it wouldn’t be too taxing to paint the cabinets since I don’t have a lot of them and the insides are already painted white (although they do need to be sanded and repainted *groan*).

The first step in creating a “work with what you’ve got” dream kitchen is degreasing cabinets thoroughly. This is an important step because if you don’t degrease then the paint and primer will have a hard time sticking and ruin your paint job, even if you sand. It would be tragic to put in all that work and still have it look like poop.

To degrease my cabinets I bought Mean Green Super Strength Cleaner & Degreaser. I usually DIY my own cleaners out of natural ingredients I keep on hand, but I had a feeling I would need something really tough since I was prepping the cabinets for paint. I like this product because it doesn’t have a powerful smell like most cleaning products and I didn’t feel like my hands were going to melt off if I got it all over. The degreaser was a fair price and I will definitely use it to clean other areas of my kitchen as well. The bottle doesn’t say that this specific product is for cabinets, but it worked great.

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This RentalTo degrease the cabinets I sprayed the cabinets one at a time with Mean Green and used a damp rag to scrub off the grime. The hot spots of my cabinets were the handles and along the sides of the doors/drawers. The faces of the doors weren’t too bad in most spots except near the stove and sink. It took me a few hours to do and not too much elbow grease. I didn’t keep close track of time but I would guess that time included trying to take pictures in my poorly lit kitchen. Now my cabinets are clean (but still ugly) and feel so much nicer to the touch.

Now some before and afters!

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

Before                                                                           After

You can definitely see an improvement, and what’s left is imperfections in the wood

  Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This RentalPrepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

Before                                                    After

You can see the grime in the bottom left corner is gone and the hardware is sparkly clean. Having clean cabinets definitely shows how much abuse they have taken. Even better reason to paint!

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

This is after I cleaned and you can see the giant scratches and how faded the finish is on the wood

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

Here is my cat trying to help out 😉 Say hi Eleanor

Prepping Cabinets for Paint - A Review of Mean Green | Flip This Rental

And finally my clean cabinets in the limelight. What do you think of the color and weird grain of this wood? Are you tackling a similar project? Drop by the comments and let me know what you think!

If you liked this post, check out how I cleaned my cabinet hardware here.

See You Around!

Lauren <3