annie sloan chalk paint: kitchen cabinets [part 1]

When we moved into this house, I fell in love with the layout of the kitchen.  However...the 42 inch dreamy cabinets were u-g-l-y.  They were some kind of yellowish wood with brass knobs.  Lots and lots of blingy brass knobs.  We knew we needed to do something about all of that wood, and thought we could just have someone paint our cabinets for us.  Do you know how much it costs to get someone to professionally paint your cabinets? A few thousand dollars.  Yeah.Right.  So, we ordered some pretty knobs and drawer pulls off of Amazon and decided to do paint them ourselves!  

Have you heard of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint?  It's fantastic.  No sanding!  No priming!  Just paint it on! And y'all, honestly we didn't sand or prime or anything!  We just cleaned the cabinets and started painting. But the thing about chalk paint (not to be confused with chalkboard paint, not the same stuff) is that you have to put something over top of it.  ASCP is designed primarily to use with a wax on top, but we chose to use ASCP lacquer on top instead.  It seemed a little more user friendly for us, and the lacquer is supposedly more durable than the wax (it's designed for use on painted floors!) which will hold up to the wear and tear of wet hands, flying food, and other insanities that happen in my kitchen.  You can't buy ASCP at normal paint retailers, you have to get them from one of their stockists that are usually set up in the cutest little shops.  We got ours from the Melville Trading Post in Mebane.  I could have spent hours in that store, drooling over beautifully distressed pieces of furniture painted with ASCP.  But I left with my paint and lacquer and began coming up with a game plan on how we would tackle this project.

The good thing about our kitchen is that we have tons of drawers and cabinets.  But it made it really overwhelming to think of actually starting to paint them.  Once you start, there's no going back!  It's not like we can just take all of our cabinet doors off and start painting...a wild and crazy 14 month old puts pretty strict constraints on how to execute a project like this.  We decided to start small with the island.  Our color of choice:  ASCP French Linen.

Notice that the can of paint is small.  ASCP comes in quarts, and because of the thickness of the paint, a little goes a long way.  We used a little over half of the quart for the entire island. 

This is the color of the wood that we were happy to cover up:

Yikes.

Between the brass knobs and yellow wood, it made our wood floors glow yellow. 

Step one...take of all of those knobs!

We cleaned the cabinet doors with a wood cleaner from Lowes, then we took the doors off and painted them with 3 coats of French Linen.  To paint 3 coats took no time at all, because one of the magical things about ASCP is that it dries SO fast.  By the time we were finished with the 4th door, we could loop back to the first one for the next coat.  

And then I stopped taking pictures...woops.  Next, we brushed on one coat of lacquer, then rubbed a dark mocha stain into the grooves of the doors and drawers, and finished it off with one more coat of lacquer. ASCP is designed to be distressed, most often you can sand it down in places to reveal the wood or paint underneath the chalk paint.  We wanted them distressed looking but didn't want the ugly colored wood to show through, so that's why we did a dark glaze rubbed in the nooks and crannies.  Then we added our knew oil rubbed bronze knobs and stepped back to admire our work!

[disclaimer: this picture was taken before we did the mocha stain rub in the grooves]

 Success!  Now we are in the middle of painting the rest of the cabinets.  Our color of choice for the rest of the cabinets is ASCP Old White.  It's a much bigger process since there are tons of cabinets, but we're trudging forward during nap times and after the little guy goes to bed.  So stay tuned!  It may be a while before we finish, but we WILL finish!

And I'd just like to say, this is one of the reasons why I love my husband.  He amuses me in these crazy projects and works his little butt off right alongside me.  You're the best, B.