Petal + Ply

formerly Dear Emmeline

Kitchen Redo: Part Five {Painting the Cabinets with Nuvo Cabinet Paint}

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Before we dive into the details of the painting process, I want to give you a good look at the cabinets before and how they look now.

 

 

Big difference, right?

We painted the cabinets using Giani Granite’s Nuvo Cabinet Paint.

The top cabinets and large pantry cabinet are painted in Titanium Infusion: White and the lower cabinets are painted in Coconut Espresso: Creamy Soft White.

Titanium Infusion
Coconut Espresso

From the pictures you can see there isn’t a ton of difference in the two colors but Coconut Espresso definitely veers a tad more towards cream. We thought this would help tie the cabinets to our existing granite counter tops as well as camouflage tiny hand prints.  It also helps tone down the bright bright white of the uppers and helps keep the kitchen from feeling too sterile.

Each Nuvo Cabinet Paint Kit comes with paper and video directions as well as 2 quarts of paint, a sanding pad, angled brush, a quart sized paint stirrer, and a small roller with handle.  You can also order additional cans of the paint separately which is great if you have a larger than average kitchen!  Nuvo Cabinet Paint is made to adhere to wood, metal, laminate, and melamine cabinets.

So here’s what we did.

First we scrubbed cabinets with Windex (recommended in directions).  Let me just tell you that this is no easy task!  We have killer tall cabinets and I don’t think they have had a good thorough scrubbing EVER.  The details on the cabinets above the oven felt like they had a gummy coating (cooking oil I’m assuming) which was hard to remove even with the Windex and a ton of elbow grease.  You may want to bring out a heavy duty cleaner for those cabinets.  I would also recommend wiping down the cabinets with a Deglosser/Cleaner or Paint Deglosser to help ensure proper paint adhesion.  Giani does not recommend this in their instructions but if you want your freshly painted cabinets to last its an easy step to help.

Nuvo Cabinet Paint is quick drying water-based acrylic paint so the directions state you can simply tape off your cabinets and paint the doors without removing them.  We have inside flush mount hinges so we decided to remove the doors to paint the frames.

We put the doors back on after the frames were fully painted and painted them while hanging.  This allowed us to paint both sides of the door at one time making the total process quicker.

We used 3 coats of paint to get full coverage.  2 coats would most likely be sufficient for flat cabinet surfaces but our wood has a lot of grain.

1 coat with roller
first and second coats with brush

The paint goes on smoothly and seemed to self level.  Even when we used a brush there were minimal brush strokes visible after the paint dried.

We were told the cabinets did not need an additional top coat.  In the few weeks we have had them painted and when we replaced the hardware we have noticed that not having a top coat seems like a bad idea.  Just like any other paint, if it gets banged or scratched the paint is going to chip.  After we touch up a little area that someone (undetermined who!) decided to gouge with a mechanical pencil we will be taking the time to give the cabinets a Satin Polyurethane Protective Finish.  If you want your finish protected I would recommend doing the same.

Feel free to visit the other posts in our kitchen makeover series:
Painted Cabinet Reveal
Hardboard Plank Wall
Easy Conduit and Knob Curtain Rod DIY
Side Kitchen Reveal

Disclosure:  Thank you to Giani Granite for supplying the Nuvo Cabinet Paint Kit for this cabinet makeover.  All opinions and suggestions are my own.  This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

 

Comments

  4. It all looks wonderful. I'm in the process of changing my entire kitchen to white except one wall that I'm stoning. Kind of a Tuscan style but done with brown grocery bags. Yours looks so great makes me anixous to get done!

  9. Sure did! I planned on putting a source list in one of the post and then they got so long so I didn't. I should probably add it to the reveal post or make a separate post for anyone who likes to know those kinds of details!

  16. WOW!!!! Your Cabinets are gorgeous, you did such a great job. Hard work paid off. It looks so bright and new. I'm currently on coat 2 with mind and I'm happy to see that my paint is looking the same as yours at that stage. I keep debating on the sealer as well. I can see where the paint may chip when hit too hard, but I've heard Poly can leave a yellow stain on white cabinets. I'll be anxious to hear how yours turns out. I love that you are just a few steps a head of me 🙂

  19. Wonderful transformation!!…from orange to Gorgeous!!…I never heard of that paint before. We painted our cabinets a year and a half ago…pls come over and check it out…let me know what you think…enjoy your lovely space!!
    Have a happy day, Mariaelena

  20. Thanks for the info. I've been wanting to get my kitchen cabinets painted but was undecided about the paint. I'm going to take a look at the Giani.
    BTW, your kitchen looks fabulous. Great job! 🙂
    Kelly

  21. Looks so fresh and light, Jessica! I love a white kitchen. I ended up using General Finishes Polycrylic (Satin) on my cabs too…my little ones are hard on painted surfaces. I'm sure you'll feel much better when you get a clear coat on there…if anything for piece of mind.

  22. Wow! Looks amazing. I'm getting ready to renovate a kitchen and I'm thinking we could save a lot of money by redoing (painting) the cabinets ourselves. How did you decide to go with the Nuvo paint? Where did you first hear about it? Did you end up buying more paint for your cabinets or was the kit enough? Did you get a sample of the colors, or just go with what you saw on the website? And lastly, did you use a roller or brush? Thanks!

  23. Thanks Chessa! I believe I first saw Nuvo over at the blog Mom4Real. When I went to check them out I saw that the paint was supposed to dry fast and they call their paint a one day cabinet makeover. It definitely took us more than one day but we worked in stages. We went by the colors on the screen but they also have pictures of made over kitchens on their site and facebook page. We got two cans of the white (uppers) and one of the creamy white (lowers). The kit comes with 2 cans. If you were painting with only one color one kit might be enough. We had some of both colors left. We used a combo of brush and roller. The kit comes with both ad intructions for how to paint with each.

  26. Emmeline-
    It looks wonderful, I went ahead and did the same thing for our cabinets. Seems like it does chip a bit easy — did you end up using the Miniwax finish? I'm worried it might yellow the cabinets a little bit so I wanted your advice.
    Thanks!

  27. We bought a new home and moved before we got a chance to seal them. The water-based formula is supposed to be non-yellowing so I think you'd be safe on a light color as long as you use water-based and not oil-based.

  28. Love your kitchen makeover, it looks stunning!! And thank you so much for your detailed instructions, I just purchased the Cocoa Couture kit for my bathroom and wondered if I should, or could, do a Polycrylic coating. I can't wait to get started!!

  29. Thanks so much! I would definitely suggest a top coat and allowing proper dry times. That might be hard if you are using the cabinets. Removing the doors and keeping them off a few days would give them more time to cure.

  30. Thanks so much for the reply. I just painted my bathroom cabinet Wed, do you have a recommendation on how many days paint should cure before adding polycrylic?

    Luckily it's a guest bath so it will not be in use until I'm finished. Thanks so much!

  31. Usually each paint has it's own instructions for dry time between re-coats and top coats. I would say you could top coat as soon as the base coat is completely dry.

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