Kitchen Cabinet Painting in Mount Pleasant, SC

We painted these oak cabinets in Mount Pleasant for a lovely couple in Park West. Oak cabinets are the most difficult type of cabinets to paint. Unlike every type of wood used on cabinets, oak has a very open grain, presenting two challenges. Because the grain is so open grease and grime get in the grain and no matter how you clean them before priming it's impossible to clean inside the open grain which can lead to stains bleeding through the finish. Another challenge is trying to hide the open grain as much as possible. After cleaning the doors we wood-filled all the flat surfaces and sanded them smooth. Even with grain filling you can still see the pattern of the wood through the paint but it fills the open voids you would see if you skip the filling process.

First, we removed all the doors, drawer fronts, and hardware. Then we cleaned, primed, and painted the frames in place by hand. The doors and drawers get transported to the shop where we clean, fill, sand, and paint them. We primed the cabinets with BIN which is an alcohol-based shellac primer, this type of primer is the best for both adhesion and stain blocking. After priming we sprayed them two coats of Sherwin Williams Gallery Series which is designed just to be used on cabinets.

After the frames were complete and the doors were dry we installed them. The entire process from start to finish took five days. It completely transformed the look of the kitchen! Painting the cabinets took them from looking outdated with orangy-looking oak to a beautiful off-white on the top cabinets and a slightly darker color on the lower cabinets.

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