We decided to give our kitchen a facelift with our tax refund money. A few years ago we had textured and painted over the wallpaper and put in a new backsplash of ceiling tin tiles. So now we were ready for phase 2 of the kitchen update. We have ordered a new counter top along with a new sink and cooktop. We didn’t necessarily want to replace the cabinets because it is not in the budget, but I thought it would be nice to freshen them up a bit. I had decided to use the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation Kit. For our size kitchen we needed the large kit, which retails for around $150. There is one kit for dark colors and another for light, and once you choose your color you have the base coat tinted at the store. I was having trouble choosing a color because I couldn’t decide what would look best with our wall color, white backsplash, and new counter top .
I had already found a new faucet on the clearance shelf at
Home Depot to go with the new sink. It
was originally $75, and it was marked down to $20! I was really excited about this! The next day I was in Lowes, and stumbled
upon the Rustoleum cabinet kit on the oops paint shelf. It was the large kit, already tinted to
Quilters White, and it was marked down from $149 to $75! So Quilters White it
would be!
The kit comes with a deglosser, scrub pads, the base coat
(tinted to your color choice), a decorative glaze, rags for wiping the glaze, a
protective top coat, stir sticks, and an instruction book and DVD. I had to buy drop cloths, painters tape,
paint brushes, and gloves. We rolled our
ping pong table inside and covered it with a drop cloth to use as our work
surface for the cabinet drawers and doors.
We soon realized with 23 doors and 8 drawers that we couldn’t do them
all together and would have to do them in two groups. After removing the hinges from the doors it
was time to start the transformation process.
The first step was to scrub everything clean with soapy
water, wipe with a damp cloth, and wipe with a dry cloth. Next we applied the deglosser with the scrub
pads in the kit. The deglosser helps the
base coat to adhere well without having to strip the original paint or stain. After applying the deglosser, again we wiped
everything with a damp cloth then a dry cloth.
After letting that dry for an hour it was time to apply the base coat,
wait 2-3 hours, and apply a second base coat, again allowing it to dry 2-3
hours. At this point I thought they
looked great – it was all clean and white!
But with 4 boys I didn’t really want everything white.
The decorative glaze
is optional, but that was part of the reason I liked the kit in the first
place. To apply the glaze you just paint
in on with a brush and then wipe it off.
The kit has 2 big rolls of rags to use for this, and the DVD was good at
explaining how to wipe the glaze to get the desired effect. I decided not to glaze the backs of the
cabinet doors, so they are just white.
After you apply the glaze you need to wait 8 hours before the next step –
the protective coat. You just brush this
clear coat on with a paint brush. After
12 hours you can finally reinstall the transformed cabinets. 
I am really happy with how the whole thing turned out. The instructions were easy to follow, and
there were plenty of supplies. In fact
we have enough deglosser, paint, and glaze to update our bathroom cabinets in
the future if we want to. It did take me
longer than I expected. I thought it
would be about a 3 day job, and it ended up taking about 6. We had around 150 square feet of cabinets to
cover. I think if we had a smaller kitchen
or if we had enough work space to paint all of the cabinet doors and drawers at
the same time it would have taken 3-4 days.
I’m glad we did this project and almost feel like we have a new kitchen!