When it comes time to refinish kitchen cabinets, many homeowners prefer to take the work on themselves. But unfortunately, those among us who like to personally mount these improvement projects often commit some costly mistakes. The result is a kitchen cabinet that clearly looks like it was refinished by a novice at the task, instead of a skilled professional with years of experience.

So if you have your heart set on painting your old kitchen cabinets yourself, there are some very important mistakes you must avoid. Many DIY’ers don’t consider many of these crucial steps before putting brush to paint and that can make the job twice as difficult to accomplish. Do it right the first time and you’ll have a beautiful new kitchen in no time.

Underestimating the Project

This is probably the biggest mistake that most homeowners commit when they paint their kitchen cabinets. They take a look at their cabinets, make the incorrect assumption that they’re just one small component of the kitchen, and assume they can re-paint it all in a day or two.

Don’t make that mistake. There are multiple steps in the process of painting your old kitchen cabinets correctly, you must devote enough time to the job if you want it to look good. Rushing will result in poor workmanship. Keeping that in mind, allow for a minimum of five days to a week to repaint your kitchen cabinets properly.

Cleaning Thoroughly

Before you do anything to those cabinets, be sure to clean them with a degreaser. Wipe down every inch, because your paint may not fully apply to a door or drawer that has a layer of oil and film on it. The cabinets may look clean but unless they are completely free of grease and other elements that can get on there from normal wear and tear, your paint job will never look right.

Removing the Doors and Drawers

Don’t be lazy. Skipping this step won’t make the job go by faster, what it will do is ensure that you’re doing the job again in just a few months. So forget about cutting corners and carefully remove the doors and pull out the drawers, and above all else, take off all the hardware. That includes the hinges and knobs.

Those of you who think painting over all of it at once will save time are in for a rude awakening when the paint starts to chip and crack along the hardware and the cabinet surfaces. It won’t take long until these things start to show and your newly painted kitchen cabinets start to look old all over again.

Hire an Expert

Sometimes you need to know when the job is just too big to handle yourself. Homeowners planning on doing some cabinet refinishing in Austin, TX may want to, at the very least, have a professional company on standby to call in the event you realize that you’re just not getting the job done right. Finding the right expert can make all the difference between having kitchen cabinets that look like they were done on the cheap and kitchen cabinets that look like they were done right.