First you have to make an assessment of what you want to do with your Used kitchen cabinets. Do you want to paint them or do you want to strip them and re-stain them?
First of all find a container you can put all your hardware into, take off all your hardware.
Suspend a plastic wall made out of thin plastic around the area containing the cupboards. This can be a light gauge plastic that you hang from the ceiling down to the floor to contain all the dust you going to make. You should use a painter’s tape so you won’t tear the paint off the ceiling.
If you’re going to just re-varnish the kitchen cupboard surfaces use a very light sandpaper 120 or above basically just to remove the top layer removing dust particles and to clean it up to accept a new coat of white paint or what ever the color is or varnish if it is a varnished cabinet door or cabinet.
Sanding kitchen cabinet door
If you have loads of layers of paint on your cupboards you might consider acquiring an orbital sander and begin with a 60 grit sand paper to aggressively remove the paint. After using it for a while (the orbital sander) you will get a hang of it. Example how much to press and how quickly the sanding machine can move around the the cupboard doors or cabinets.
Depending on how complicated the profiles are on your wood you might have to fold your sandpaper in half or quarters to give the rigidity and sand spots that you can’t do by finger.
Once you’ve got everything sanded down dust everything off with a soft brush moving one way. Next I usually take a softer rag just put a touch of varsol on it or some kind of paint thinner solvents to lightly moistened the rag so it will pick up leftover dust.
Now you are ready to paint the cabinets, make sure you get a very high “quality” paint that has good leveling agents in it (this will allow paint to nicely smooth out),I like using benjamin moore paints
It is always better to put multiple coats on instead of one thick finish coat. Start in the top part of the cabinet and work downward smoothing the paint out as you go. Don’t overdo it and try to make it look perfect in the first coat, the thinner the better. Always brush in the direction of the length section (this is like ” painting with the grain” of the wood sort of speak painting lengthwise) this also means that if there are any solid rails, or solid frame type wood framing something you should also paint length wise don’t cross paint long pieces of wood paint everything lengthwise with nice smooth easy strokes. And don’t pack a lot of paint on the strokes. Once you have the piece of wood or door completely covered then it is best with a dry brush, go from end to end without picking up the brush. This will take out any squiggly brush impressions out of the paint.
Now that everything is dried, exam in your work. If everything looks well your second coat should go on very nicely. Again with a very fine sandpaper and very lightly pass over the paint job. If you did a nice even coat on the first coat sanding should only be to remove dust particles.
Again with the same method you can put one more coat on thinly and evenly always watching for runs or sags at corners.
Now that you’re done and the cabinets are dry you can remove your drop curtain carefully, and you can pull up your drop sheet from the floor by folding it in over top of itself not to upset the dust.
If your little leery about undertaking the refinishing of your used kitchen cabinets you can also go to Toronto painters for further help on this.
Here is a quick world video on someone painting a interior wooden door which is the same concept as painting kitchen cabinet door.
