Painting your kitchen cabinets is a great way to spruce up your kitchen in Langley, BC. Cabinets often take up a large portion of the kitchen, so painting them a different colour can make a large impact on the overall ambience. Good cabinet painting companies insist on adhering to a good process to generate the best result. This includes sanding your cabinets. In this article we will discuss why it is so important that you sand your cabinets.
If you are interested in tackling your kitchen cabinet painting project on your own, take a look at our DIY kitchen cabinet painting guide.
Six Reasons Why Cabinet Painting Companies Sand Your Cabinets
- Adhesion
Once upon a time there was a cabinet painter in Langley, BC who didn’t sand his cabinets. All the paint flaked off, the end . Sarcasm, but yes, sanding is a critical part of the cabinet painting process. If the paint doesn’t stick, all your hard effort, or forgone money is wasted.
Sanding the cabinet doors creates a profile for the paints and primers to adhere to. Good cabinet painting companies will finish their cabinets with a lacquer or waterborne equivalent and apply the material with a sprayer. The result is a very smooth and hard finish. If you were to try to paint directly over those surfaces, the results would be less than satisfactory.
Sanding will breakdown the surface of the existing lacquer coating, creating a surface that will accept the new product that you are applying.
- Finish
Aside from adhesion, good cabinet painting companies will insist on sanding your cabinets to help with the uniformity of the finish. Sanding your cabinets is one part in ensuring that the coatings will lay out evenly giving you a professional, elegant result.
- Texture
If the cabinets that you are painting are older, or maybe have been repainted several times, which is sometimes the case in older homes in Langley, BC, the existing texture may not be that smooth. If there is a stipple texture on the cabinets, then that means that the previous paint job was likely applied with a roller and/or the wrong kind of paint. In this kind of situation, thoroughly sanding your cabinets will dramatically improve the appearance.
Cabinet painting companies will use specialty power sanders to dramatically decrease the amount of time needed to sand the flat surfaces. Power sanders can be rented or purchased for $100 or less and will make you life a lot easier. You are going to want to buy a mixture of sandpapers from 150 grit to 220 grit. Do the initial sanding with 150 grit sandpaper to remove the bulk of the texture, then follow up with the 220 to smooth it out further.
- Swollen Edges
Sometimes the edges of the doors that are below the sink can be swollen from water resting on them consistently over time. If the damage is slight, then they can sometimes be sanded back into the correct shape with a little wood filler applied before hand to till in the gaps.
- Peeling paint
If there is any peeling paint on the cabinets, a system of sanding from heavier grit to a finer grit can help to make the leftover edge from scraping disappear. Cabinet painting companies will again often use a power sander in the beginning to help with this.
- Brand new doors
Finally, if your cabinets are brand new and raw, a light sanding open the pores of the material to receive the primer. This will improve adhesion and the evenness of the finished product.
In conclusion, sanding your cabinets is a very important part of the cabinet painting process for any home in Langley, BC. Forgoing the sanding process can result in peeling paint, poor texture, swollen edges, and ridges left from previous paint that has flaked off. A thorough sanding of your cabinets is the number one thing that you can do to guarantee great final results.
Blue Chip Painting are a professionals in the world of painting and among the best cabinet painting companies. For a free estimate on your cabinet painting project, reach out through our website and we will be in contact .
-Jeremy