white and bright!

I am officially about 1/18th of the way to a white kitchen! YIPEE!!!  Not sure whether I think the decision to partial paint was a great idea or a epic fail-- you all will have to let me know:) 

So here's how it went down... I decided on a boring Saturday a few weeks ago that I wanted to give painting the kitchen cabinets a go--but I didn't necessarily want to sign myself up for painting the entire kitchen since well, lets be real, that's quite the commitment. I met myself in the middle and decided to only paint the kitchen island to see how I felt about white cabinets.  Now- it is important to know that while I did not technically tell Dan I was going to do this he DID say many months ago that I could paint the kitchen white and I am 99% sure he heard me tell someone on the phone that morning that I was going to start the process AND when I came home with armloads of paint and materials he didn't say a word so in my defense I thought we were on the same page... :-)  We were not on the same page.  Luckily we were early enough into the New Year that his resolution of being a little more patient when I act a fool was still fresh in his mind-- so I survived that one.

ANYWAYS-- onto the project.

I learned from my good friends (only in my dreams) Sherry and John over at Young House Love that its important to sand, use oil based primer and a semi-gloss latex paint when painting kitchen cabinets, so that is what I did.  I wanted cabinets that were SUPER white so that they matched the color of the trim molding in our house.  I went with Ultra White and it definitely is insanely white!


My first steps was taking a before picture.. here she is just begging for some white paint!

Then I took the hardware off of the cabinets (but kept the doors on for the time being) and started to sand the entire piece with my electric sander.

Once the sanding was done and she was grainy to the touch I took the doors off, wiped everything clean with a wet rag, dried and then started with the oil based primer.  Here is one coat in--this stuff is THICK!

After a coat of primer I let her sit to dry for about 4 hours.  Apparently you should do this overnight but I am too impatient for all that nonsense... so I moved onto my two coats of paint and after two full days of drying I re-attached the doors, added the hardware back and jumped up and down that a). I was done and b). I LOVED IT!!!!!  Here is the end result...

So what do you think?  Love the white?  Hate the white?  Keep as it is (with a white island and brown on the main cabinets) or paint everything white ASAP?  I for one vote on ALL white but add some glass pained doors to a few of the cabinets so it doesn't look to blindingly white.  Let me know what you think!


Carolyn