Painting the Cabinets

I've mentioned a couple of times that one of the things I'm trying to do is get the camper to look less like a camper and more like a living room or a house. And one of the things that's really gonna help that is changing the look of these galley cabinets. Changing the look. I want to get a coat of paint on them. With these cabinets, a lot like the walls, it's not as simple as just slapping paint on.

There's some steps we have to do to make sure that the paint is gonna come out okay and look okay. Part of that is gonna involve using Aqua Coat grain filler, and this is gonna do a really nice job of giving us a beautiful- A beautiful finish on these cabinets when they're done. So what I'm gonna do to get started with, the doors and drawers got to come off and out. The other thing I'm gonna do is instead of trying to work around the appliances, I'm just gonna take those out altogether, and that's going to make it a whole lot easier to get the, to get good work done on the cabinetry. So that's first step, bunch of removal.

Any time you're taking stuff apart in the camper, here's a great tip: get yourself a magnetic tray. You can get these any place that sells auto repair stuff. It's just what it sounds like. Big magnets on the bottom. And when I drop stuff in here, it's gonna stay in here.

So, When I'm trying to keep track of little parts that have to come back in later, it's gonna be a way to store that stuff so I know exactly where it is when I need it. Devil is the details, right? And part of the details with getting a really good coat of paint on these cabinets is gonna be prep work. So there's a bunch of stuff going on here. On these doors, what I have done is I've used the same wood dough that I've been using all along.

And I put that into the holes where the poles were. I know those poles aren't going back up. So, I'm gonna fill those as part of this process. Then, where we're going with this is all about grain filler. And if you look closely at the doors or at the cabinets, they're really not flat.

The frames, the panels, the cases themselves or the cabinets, there's all sorts of texture going on here. And if all I do is put paint over this, that texture is gonna telegraph through, and we don't want that. We don't want it to look like grain. We want it to look like a nice, smooth cabinet face when we're done. Or door face or drawer face.

So the grain filler that we're gonna put on is what's gonna facilitate that. It's gonna do just what the name says. It's gonna fill the grain, leaving us with a nice, level surface for the paint. Couple of things in the world of preparation. The wood dough goes on.

Then, all of these surfaces have to get sanded. I'm using 180-grit sandpaper on the sanding block. And then any place where we have a contour, so for instance, the edge of that door right there, probably can't use the sanding block. We might have to just do this the old-fashioned way and get in there. And I'm using my thumb to shape that sandpaper to the edge.

And also here on the panel on this case, the frame is wood and the panel is some kind of man-made material covered with like, contact paper. But I want to do that same thing here. I want to scuff that surface. I want to scuff that sandpaper- Or scuff that contact paper so that it's got some tooth to it, and it's gonna be able to accept the grain filler when we're ready for that step. Ready for that step is, do all that sanding, both phases.

This guy is already to that point. It's ready for our grain-color step. You want the door to be clean. Do not wipe it or the cabinet. Don't wipe it with a tack cloth.

Where you can blow it off with an air compressor, you can vacuum it off, you can wipe it with a clean rag, but tack cloths tack by virtue of having kind of an oil to them. We don't want that to telegraph into the work here. So, don't use a tack cloth to clean this thing up. When we put the grain filler on, this isn't hard to do, but you want to follow a couple of rules of the road. It's a water-based product, easy cleanup.

What we want to do is get it into the grain by first going across the grain. Then we want to remove excess by pulling with the grain. And just a standard plastic putty-knife is gonna work great for this. And it's nice, it's white, it's got some good body to it, it's easy to work with. I'm putting a little bit of down pressure on it here, making sure it's in to all the little whoopty do's in that contact paper.

And just work a small section at a time. Then come back with the grain and think of that like squeegeeing it off. You're squeegeeing the excess off the surface. Then do the next section. The reason we want to do a small section at a time is this stuff dries pretty fast, and we don't want it to get away from us and start to dry before you have a chance to do the squeegee stuff.

Now normally, I would have just started at the end and worked my way down, but I wanted to make sure the camera could see what I was doing. That's why in this case, I started in the middle. Cross grain. Small section with the Grain. Now don't sweat having just a little bit of excess still on there, because after this dries, this grain filler is gonna get sanded.

And that's another opportunity then to level this out. In fact, it's gonna get sanded and we're gonna do a second coat. Now the face here, you can see how that's gonna be very, very similar. Cross grain to push it in. And then pull long-grain, pull with the grain to level it.

And you can see, if you look at this, just look at the grain, see where the white is prevalently being left behind. Those are the low spots in the grain. That's why we're doing this. And where it still looks brown, those are the higher spots that aren't taking as much grain filler. That's the whole point of this exercise, is to leave the grain filler in the low spots.

Then on these contoured edges, what you may need to do is go to a smaller putty knife so that we can work that down in. If you've got an old credit card, that's another good way to put this on, is use the edge of the credit card and/or cut the credit card to a special shape in order to match the profile that you're trying to hit here. But again, remember how I started this. Devil's in the details. So make sure that you get grain filler every place that there needs to be grain filler so we get that good, consistent paint job.

Now, let's talk about inside the camper. Obviously, I couldn't bring the cabinets out here. So inside the camper, first step was the same: sand the cabinet cases. You can power-sand this stuff. If you do use a power sander, use fine grit, 180-grit sandpaper, and take advantage of the sander having variable speed if it does.

Slow the RPM down, and that's gonna give you better control to make sure that you don't over-sand. All we really need to do is scuff the surface, rough it up just a little bit, so that we know it's gonna accept the grain filler. Now in this cabinet side, it had holes left in it from, I don't know, paper towel holders and the flippy-uppy thing. Use the wood dough. Fill those holes.

Once that wood dough has the opportunity to dry, sand that out, and then our protocol for working with the grain filler is gonna be the same. The first step, pull the grain filler across the grain, making sure that you embed it in all the grain patterns, and then come back and like, squeegee. Pull the putty knife in the same direction as the grain to make sure that you take off any excess. Now, inside the cabinets, or inside the camper on the cabinets, there was a funky little piece of edge banding, and rather than trying to deal with that and sand it, or, and you know, grain-fill it, paint it, I pulled it off completely, and then I used wood dough and we're gonna fill the slot that was left behind, underneath that molding. And that's, in the end, gonna give me a much better look inside the camper here than trying to stick with that piece of G-molding that was on that edge.

Here on the doors, it's just keep doing what you're doing, and I'm gonna get grain filler on here. Once it's dry, we'll come back and look at the next step. Once your first coat of grain filler is dry, then it's, we're in a rinse-and-repeat process here, which is gently sand that first coat. And gently is the key. You know, we don't want to remove, we don't want to undo what we've done.

So as you sand the surface, you want to just level it a little bit, but make sure that we're leaving the grain filler where we need to leave the grain filler. For your sanding process, especially on something like these doors, this has got kind of a little sort of an ogee profile down here on the edge. Kind of an S-shape to it. And for that, as well as for the initial sanding, you might have better luck with a sanding sponge like this, instead of just taking a piece of sandpaper and wrapping it around your fingers, because these do a nice job of conforming to that shape. There, and then there's a little bead on the inside of the doorframe.

So same thing. A sanding sponge would be a good choice for cleaning that up. Then, once we've got that sanded, and what you're looking for here is, that should feel pretty smooth. Now, smooth and grainy are two different things. So even on this end where I sanded, this, kind of the field right here is smooth, but when I do this, I can still feel grain pattern.

Highs and lows. That's gonna telegraph through the paint. That's the whole thing we're trying to avoid. So all that comes down to, you're gonna need a second coat of grain filler in most cases, in order to take care of that. And that's gonna be exactly the same process: work it in across the grain, squeegee it off with the grain, allow it to dry, gently sand it.

And once we get to that point, we're gonna be ready for paint, which is gonna be crazy cool. If it needs a third coat, you might have to do a third coat. And of course, what I'm doing in the front of the door is also happening to the back of the door. So, exact same process there. Then, we had a look at the cabinets inside the camper.

Exact same process there: let that dry, sand it, and then get that second coat of grain filler on the cabinets as well. For me, back to the S-word, back to sanding. Man, there's been a lot of sanding on this camper. But the payoff is gonna be that when paint hits these babies, it's gonna look absolutely beautiful. If have a happy look on my face, and I do, it's because I am so happy with the preparation that was done to get the cabinet parts, the doors and the drawer fronts and the cabinets, to this point where they're taking paint so well.

And, I am absolutely in love with this Aegean teal that I'm putting on here. You'll see this on the base cabinet and the galley in just a little bit. So again, like so many things, good results come from good preparation. So, using the Aqua Coat grain filler on here as a precursor to painting is what, when you look at the door and the door and the drawer fronts, that what is, that's what is allowing this paint to level out so well and not have the grain of the wood telegraphing through. That's what's making it look so great.

The other thing that's going on here you should know about are these guys. Painter's pyramids are really, really valuable. I've got three of these under each of the doors. And what those do is they elevate the door off of the surface so that when I'm doing my painting, and I come around like this, I'm not right down on that rosin paper, and basically gluing the door, the paper, by virtue of the paint. So the painter's pyramids are a really, really good way to let you have whatever it is you're working on stand proud on the surface that you're on so that you can kind of wrap your brush around, like I'm doing here, in order to make sure that you don't have drips on that back corner and again, you know, glue the object down to the surface that you're working on.

I'm going to keep going on these. Now, one of the things I've already done is I've already got white on the vanity door, because the bathroom vanity is gonna be white, and I've already got white on the doors that go back onto the kitchen galley. Then, in just a second, we'll have a look inside the camper, with this Aegean teal going onto the base cabinet in the galley, it's really gonna be beautiful. Hey and before I go, I thought I was done, but I'm not. One more thing.

Just like when we talked about doing the walls inside the camper, this is a Texas two-step operation. This is a two-step operation. Start with the brush, and do what you need to do with the brush. Then, about where I'm at here. Then come back with the roller and start over-coating with the roller.

And what that roller is gonna help do is eliminate any brushstrokes that may have been left behind by oddly enough, the brush. Okay, now I'm done. We'll go inside. As promised, I have come into the camper so I can show you the Aegean teal going on to the interior cabinet here. Here's my color scheme.

As I'm putting this, I'm putting the Aegean teal only on the base cabinet of the galley. And if you have a look up above, you can see that I have got a white on the upper cabinet. Part of the reason I did that is the area is so narrow in the galley here that I thought if I did dark, top and bottom, that that would be too much dark. It would feel confined. So dark on the bottom, light on the top.

And again, boy, this is a, this color, this paint is going on so well. And we're back to this. I'm gonna say it again. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Sanding, grain filler, sanding, grain filler, and then a good coat of paint.

And these are looking absolutely wonderful. That takes care of the how-to aspect of getting paint on these cabinets. And further along in the series here, you'll have a chance to see how everything looks with the doors and the drawers back in and on, and new hardware on the doors and the drawers. But, this takes care of our painting step. And, add another.