I Painted My Kitchen Cabinets GREEN!!

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Yes, I painted my kitchen cabinets Pewter Green by SW and I’m in love! Green cabinets aren’t for everyone, but they are definitely for me! It’s been 2 years and the paint is holding up pretty well! There are a few highly used cabinets and drawers that need a little touching up, but I’m happy with how strong this paint is!

This is the kitchen we had when we first moved in. I thought it would be a long time before we remodeled it, but I just couldn’t handle the cherry colored MDF cabinets any longer! This was one of those projects that spiraled.

In the previous post I showed you how I raised the cabinets to the ceiling. Once that was done I filled all the nail holes and seams. Then I lightly sanded everything with my orbital sander, just a quick swipe of the sander with 180 grit sander paper, just enough to scuff up the cabinets so the paint would stick really well. If I did this project again I would only fill the nail holes, not the seems since cabinet boxes aren’t usually filled where they meet.

Once it was all lightly sanded, I went over everything with liquid sandpaper. That left a residue on the surface so after that I went over it all with a cloth and water and then again with a tack cloth to prepare for paint. I did use gloves because I wasn’t sure if the chemical cleaner would be okay to touch my skin. Better to be safe.

Side note: When I took the cabinet doors and draws off I labeled the hinges to make sure they all go back in the same exact spot and also labeled the doors/drawers. The hinges are adjusted to fit perfectly for the exact corner where they were, so it will be a lot less work if they are labeled and go back onto the same exact spot so you won’t have to adjust a lot of them later.

Once everything was prepped I primed all of the cabinet boxes, drawers and doors. I brushed and rolled on the cabinet boxes and I bought a Wagner paint sprayer for the doors and drawers to get the smoothest finish I could. I did have to thin the primer for the paint sprayer, but the paint said “do not thin” and it came out of the sprayer super smooth! I used the Behr cabinet and trim enamel in Satin and really loved this paint! I had Home Depot color it.

Choosing a paint color was hard! I got samples of so many greens and ended up choosing Pewter Green by SW. It was the perfect earthy green I was looking for. This was my inspo pic and from what I could find they used Pewter Green by SW mixed with Ripe Olive by SW but I wasn’t sure of what % and mixing them didn’t change the color THAT much so I stuck with just Pewter Green to make it easy.

I sectioned the cabinets off from top to bottom so it didn’t seem so overwhelming. First I prepped, primed and painted the top cabinets and then did the bottoms a week or so later. That way the doors and drawers were also easier to keep track of. I used these awesome Zibra paint brushes to paint the edges by the wall, floor and countertop, and used a foam roller to roll on the rest. I did notice the foam roller worked really well with the primer, but it was leaving the paint bubbly. So I ended up rolling it on and then smoothing out the bubbles with the Zibra brush. These brushes are super fine and soft and the brush marks are minimal.

Then it was time to put all the doors and draws back on! This was the most exciting part, the kitchen really came together after this step. I did put these bumpers on the backs of the doors and drawers to prevent them from making a lot of noise when they close and to prevent the paint getting scuffed up.

Of course this project spiraled…I ended up removing the backsplash because I didn’t want to mess up the paint when doing it later. You can find that post here.

Here’s a quick video of the process.

But here she is before I got the lowers painted! I love this kitchen so much more now!

All kitchen links here.

Next, I dropped the bar top down to countertop height.