Prepping Kitchen Cabinets For Paint Using Deglosser
Prepping your kitchen cabinets for painting can be easy if you are following the correct process using deglosser instead of sandpaper. Start with cleaning the grease, grime and everyday dirt off of the cabinets with a solution of Dawn dish soap and warm water. For those of you with heavily soiled cabinets, you may need to use a stronger cleaning solution, such as TSP, but the Dawn dish soap solution can work for most situations.
Once your cabinets are clean, you need to dull the finish of the surface in order for your paint to bond properly. If there is no need to repair deep gouges in the wood (with traditional sanding techniques), deglosser, also known as "liquid sandpaper" can be a perfect option to dull that finish. Apply the deglosser with a green scouring pad, lightly scrubbing the deglosser with the grain of the wood. Without letting the deglosser dry, wipe away the deglosser and broken down finish with a damp cloth. This process will leave your kitchen cabinet surface dull, and ready for your paint finish to bond properly.
Welcome to the Everyday Workbench, here is an item by item list of what products were needed to degloss our cabinetry. Let us know how these products worked for YOU, and if you have a product or project that you would like to see on the Everyday Workbench. Thanks!
There are quite a few deglossing agents we have used, and this is one of the better ones:
You don’t “need” a drill, but it’s much more efficient and more fun than a screwdriver:
We used dawn to clean our cabinets, but if you have a really dirty and grimy surface, use something stronger, like TSP:
Every painting and painting prep project can never have enough rags!
These pads worked great with our deglossing agent:
Protect your hands: