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Prepare Cabinets for Painting

16:26
58:15
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At 16:26 in

🔴 The Idaho Painter LIVE. Cabinet Painting Tips

What happens here

Before applying any finish, it is crucial to clean the cabinet surfaces thoroughly to prevent issues like 'fish-eye' (small craters or blemishes in the finish caused by surface contamination). Begin by scrubbing the cabinets with Dawn dish soap and a non-abrasive scrubber (like a Brillo pad with a green scrubber side). Dawn dish soap is recommended as it does not leave a residue. For older or heavily contaminated cabinets, using denatured alcohol can be effective for cleaning. After cleaning, check for any floating panels or gaps in the cabinet doors and caulk them using a paintable caulk. A video demonstrating proper caulking techniques will be available soon. Ensure all contaminants are removed as residual silicone, food, oil, or even lemon oils (often used for cleaning) can cause the finish to bead up or 'fish-eye.'

Goal: Thoroughly clean cabinet surfaces to remove contaminants like grease, oils, and silicone, then caulk any gaps in floating panels for a smooth, sealed finish.

Tools and materials

  • Brillo Pad (non-abrasive side)
  • Caulking Gun
  • Dawn Dish Soap Dawn
  • Denatured Alcohol
  • Paintable Caulk

What they say

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do you prep the cabin doors prior to painting Sam I'm not too good questions go see if you can see if John's ready to come in here and I'll talk about that real fast and I'm just to see what John's doing so how we prep them the you know the the easy method how we typically do it is in a lot of it depends on the age of the cabinet's but we start off using Dawn dish soap and we've used a lot of different chemicals and stuff to clean our cabinets and get them ready to paint because one of the things you're gonna run into one of the absolute nightmares is fisheye and that's contaminants being on your your cabinet so when you spray it with a lacquer it it beads away and little round circles and we call them fish eyes and what that is is it's a difference in surface tension between your your locker and the chemical contaminant that's on your surface and because there's a difference in surface tension the one chemical like your lacquer is gonna want to flow away from the the contamination that usually flows away and little circles what we call fish eyes and so you have to get all the contaminant off how do you know because your majority the time you know it's just clear it's gonna be some type of maybe silicone or some type of cleaner or some type of food oil or a lot of type people try to clean their cabinets with lemon oils and stuff like that so there's a lot of different contaminants that can be on your cabinet but well typically we use Dawn dish soap because it doesn't leave any residue behind and we'll scrub them with Dawn dish soap now depending on the cabinets in some of the situations will use denatured alcohol denatured alcohol works really really good as a cleaner it's spraying you so spraying all right so you still spraying you'll be it in just a little bit so the two things we use once again is is Dawn dish soap that the age of the cabinet's the ones we have you know we're working on right now they're the only like five years old six years old they're they're pretty clean but they are in a bathroom there's a lot of weird things hair gels hair sprays stuff like that that can contaminate the cabinet but we cleaned them with Dawn dish soap you scrub them really good and we just use like a brillo there the sponge with the green brillo a little pat on the back and we'll scrub them with that and just feel them down make sure there's nothing on them you know if they're kitchen like food particles and stuff like that and then just check them really good and…

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