Do-it-yourself cabinet painters, if you’re wondering what the first step is to getting a good finish when painting your kitchen cabinets, then you should consider deep cleaning your cabinets before doing anything else. Cabinets are the least cleaned surfaces in most kitchens. Most people clean their countertops, stoves, sinks, and backsplashes, but most cabinets are forgotten.
Cabinets collect all kinds of contaminants you can see. Most people cook, when they season meat, they forget a seasoning in the cabinet and with those icky hands, they brush the cabinets with their bloody contaminated hands, which they wipe off with a dish cloth if they see the residue. If they don’t see the residue, that contaminated area may not be cleaned up properly. To clean that type of contaminant, you need to clean the area with a good antibacterial cleaner that also doubles as a degreaser. In the same way that you wash your hands after seasoning meat, you should also clean out your cabinets.
Another contaminant that will ruin a paint finish is invisible oil. If you’re like most people, you only clean your cabinets once in a while, whether it’s once a month, every 3 months, or once a year. The cabinets need to be cleaned daily, as do the countertops and sink. If you don’t clean your cabinets daily, it will slowly build up a film of oil, grease, and other nasty things that you can’t see that will cause a problem when you decide to preserve or paint your cabinets.
That’s why proper cleaning before moving on to the next prep step is so important to give your paint job its best appearance. You need a few items to give your cabinets a thorough cleaning. You need gloves, a scotch pad, a sponge, a 3 gallon bucket, and your favorite degreaser.
All of the items listed are common sense, but are overlooked when a do-it-yourself homeowner decides to paint their own kitchen cabinets. Adhesive pad should only be used on your cabinets when you want to paint or fasten them. Using an adhesive pad for daily use is not recommended because it will ruin the existing finish over time. If you need to use a sticky pad to remove oil and grease, then you’ve neglected cleaning for too long and your next step should be refinishing. Clean your cabinets a couple of times. It is your project so you must be willing to do the best job for your home.
After washing down your cabinets with your best degreaser and scotch, you need to fill your 3 gallon bucket with clean water. Get your sponge really wet, then wring it out and wipe the degreaser off your cabinets. You need to keep clean water and wipe down the cabinets several times to remove the degreaser. Once you have removed the degreaser, you need to repeat the process several times, degreasing the cabinets at least 2 times, and cleaning with clean water at least 2 times after degreasing the cabinets, making sure to change the water throughout the process.