Repainting tired kitchen doors - how best to do this?

[Clive]

Hi,

I'm going to give my Mum's kitchen a bit of a "lift". The units are fine, the doors are dated, the worktop is knackered.

I am having the worktops fitted by someone who has done it for me before and he did it beautifully with great joints.

I am going to have a go at painting the doors. The doors are, say,

20 years old, only one is swelling. The doors have a chipboard / fibreboard core with a "plastic" laminate coating. My approach is / might be:

1=2E Clean doors thoroughly with dissolved Soda Crystals or Sugar Soap to get rid of the grease.

2=2E Rub the surfaces gently (with what?) to create a key for the undercoat. 3=2E Roller paint the doors with 2(?) coats of undercoat. Will that "bond" to the door laminate or should I use some other form of undercoat? 4=2E Paint the doors with a fine roller. Should I use any "special" top coat, say, "kitchen" paint? Should I spray the top coat with some kind of matt polyutherane "varnish" to seal the paint and limit the penetration of grease and stains into the new paint work? 5=2E Have a new door cut from moisture resistant MDF and paint as above. How do I get the holes for the hinges cut? Is there a special drill bit for this? 6=2E Then I can finish with more modern handles.

Anything I have missed or will be a lot trickier than I have thought? The reason for painting the doors is not just cost because the painting will take time but that the wall cabinet doors are old and very long and there isn't a modern equivalent of this size.

I think =A335 per door from online stores for MDF blanks is criminal when moisture resistant MDF is about =A325 per 8 x 4 and I can have each door cut for =A31. I am not going the MDF replacement route because of the possible tricky issue of cutting the holes for the hinges.

Thanks

Clive

[A.Lee]

Clive wrote: Load of snips

Dont even try to paint them, they'll look bloody awful - they'll be fine for your Mum if she likes to think of what her kitchen looked like in the 60's and 70's. Have a look at the Screwfix door prices - £10 ish, no matter what colour they are, it'll be better than painting existing doors. Measure your existing ones and see if any of the range will fit. If you have to add a small section to the bottom, it could be blended in quite easily, and the finish will still be better than painting old doors. How many units? At £40/unit from Screwfix, it may pay to replace all of them if you are having new worktops fitted. It's your Mum, you know you should make the effort! Alan.

[Steve]

The hinge holes are easy but you need a drill press with depth-stop and a Forstner bit i.e <

> of the right size to drill them. I would not attempt them with a hand held drill. The old hinge hole will show a centre mark which can be used to make sure that you get the correct position on the new doors by drilling through with a small drill and then transferring that to the new door.

Yep, make a simple jig for the handles so that they are all at exactly the same height and distance in from the edge.

You can try painting them but don't expect too much.

Steve

[Rob Farrell]

I'm going to give my Mum's kitchen a bit of a "lift". The units are fine, the doors are dated, the worktop is knackered.

I am having the worktops fitted by someone who has done it for me before and he did it beautifully with great joints.

I am going to have a go at painting the doors. The doors are, say,

20 years old, only one is swelling. The doors have a chipboard / fibreboard core with a "plastic" laminate coating. My approach is / might be:

It will look crap with big brush strokes and parts swelling. Even with a roller it will look terrible, like some cowboy has been at it.

I think £35 per door from online stores for MDF blanks is criminal when moisture resistant MDF is about £25 per 8 x 4 and I can have each door cut for £1. I am not going the MDF replacement route because of the possible tricky issue of cutting the holes for the hinges.

So why mention it? Also why offer to do half a job rather than a proper job. It will only have to be done again, so the money wasted on fixing what you do could have been used to do it properly.

[meow2222]

boiling caustic soda solution. Insulating gloves of course.

fine sandpaper?

Car spray paint if thats the route you want to go. It gets on everything, and must be done outside the house, but the finish quality is pretty good if sprayed evenly.

NT

[Stuart Noble]

Way OTT. Bicarbonate of soda, or washing soda if they're really greasy.

Yes but a good quality, non-clogging type. 3M etc

I've had good results with ordinary liquid gloss paints, providing the first coat is applied sparingly with a rag and left to dry for 24 hours. Once you have the initial bond, you can brush a couple of more generous coats. It's a long process though.

[Pete C]

Very fine sandpaper, just enough to 'flat' any glossiness. I'd start with 600 grit wet-or-dry. Fill ANY dings with filler first and sand down with the rest.

You need something to act as a primer, that sticks well to the surface. Acrylic paints are good primers for plastics, they're used for plastic car bumper.

I'd use something like Dulux 'Realife' Kitchen/Bathroom - soft sheen. Small foam roller and paint in cool conditions, reasonably generous coat. It's washable and also an acrylic so should be self priming on laminates I think.

Also try asking on the Talk forum on the Screwfix website.

cheers, Pete.

[meow2222]

How do you plan to get a shiny finish with no brush strokes using a brush? I once painted a set of kitchen stuff with gloss when a kid, and cant recommend it, unless your total budget for a refurb is only a tenner, the finish really is knackered, and youre not fussy.

The other issue with household gloss is that it isnt really tough enough to survive well.

NT

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:28:37 -0700 someone who may be Clive wrote this:-

If you do want to do the best job of painting the doors then take them off and paint them flat. This will give a far neater finish.

[Stuart Noble]

Liquid gloss takes a long time to dry so brushmarks shouldn't be an issue

I once painted a set of kitchen stuff with gloss when a

Car paint is fine on metal, and possibly on mdf. On a beat up old surface ordinary gloss might be more accommodating

[Tony Bryer]

There is a special paint made for melamine which my mother used on some kitchen unit doors to good effect. Ordinary gloss will - as others have already said - probably look terrible.

If all the doors are standard widths and height it might be easier to replace them all. B&Q invariably have one or other range on half price at any particular time (e.g. 500mm beech effect doors currently £13). You just need to drill four small holes in the carcass to take the hinge screws. You can make this easy by buying a wall unit feature end panel (£8 or so) and reducing its height. Then just clamp it against the carcass side and drill straight through the hinge holes.

[Stephen Hull]

If sanded down wet it will not clog, wet-or-dry should do the job.

You'll never get a decent finish using household gloss including Dulux.

You won't get brush strokes if you use a coach paint.

Most modern synthetic paints are now Alkyd resin based which being extremely tough and will hold up very well, but I'd avoid using Polyurethane and any type of household gloss if you really want a brush-mark free finish.

Stephen.

[Stephen Hull]

But the doors would then be more susceptible to contamination (dust settling etc), vertically painted panels always turn out cleaner than horizontal panels.

Stephen.

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:24:31 +0100 someone who may be Stephen Hull wrote this:-

Hopefully the doors will be painted in a largely dust free house, rather then in a relatively dusty woodworking shop.

[Stephen Hull]

woodworking shop, but will it offer enough?

You could stand your doors in the bath leaning slightly inward to protect the painted face but there's usually too much dust floating around the average house, simply walking around the room can cause dust to circulate that will eventually settle on horizontal surfaces.

Stephen.