painting kitchen cabinets

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Can you paint the ugly fake wood-grained kitchen cabinets that are in most mobile homes? I think they are pressboard with a plastic veneer...

jj
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With proper prep. they can be painted, If you want do a search of the forum, I know it has been discussed before. Or someone will be along to give you a detailed answer. Greg
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I've painted about half of my cabinets (bath, laundry, and the divider cabinet between kitchen and living room); and peeled the plastic-y stuff off of all of 'em (haven't settled on the full kitchen plan yet, so those are just the bare MDF). I suppose if the plastic-y veneer is in good shape you could lightly sand it -- just enough to knock the gloss down -- then prime and paint, because I've done that on the cabinet face frames and the paint sticks just fine. But the veneer stuff was peeling on several of my doors, and I just wanted to get rid of it entirely. Obviously, you have to take all the doors down to do this, but I've never seen really good results with paint-in-place anyway, so....... (just remember to mark each door so you get 'em back in the right place!)

The plastic peels pretty well with a putty knife and a razor scraper. It leaves a glue residue that you have to sand down, and it's VERY NASTY stuff, you definitely have to wear a mask -- in fact, you might find that your hands are sensitive to the glue and tiny fibers even while you're peeling. Also, the surface of my doors was pretty rough, so I did quite a bit of sanding even after the glue was gone. A friend of mine went to a LOT of trouble to fill the "fake-plank" grooves in her doors with wood filler (and more sanding); her doors did look nice but to me not THAT much nicer I did fill all the hardware holes, cuz the old handles seemed to be a non-standard length between screw-holes, and some of my hinges were pulling loose.

You need a good prime coat, cuz the raw MDF really soaks up paint. Then I used spray gloss enamel on the doors (primer and brushed-on semi-gloss on the face frames).

I'm really pleased with mine, but then I hate the dark plastic stuff so bad that even the raw doors in the kitchen are an improvement Hope this helps!

Phystad
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I have painted the cabinets in my kitchen and in the living room and will paint the bathroom cabinets as well. I just primed and painted and then used an antique glaze.

You can see pics by clicking on the link. The before is rather dark so you can't really tell much about how they looked before but they were ugly.

In the pics the color of the one with the TV is more the true color.

Link: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welc ... GbRmzaMXLw

donna
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have same kitchen cabinets as you described. I cleaned them with T.S.P. then primed & painted them.

Troyster
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