Expert: Eileen Cronk - 7/9/2008

Question
My son just bought a house and is on a budget at the moment.  His kitchen really needs a big face lift without replacing the cabinets. His cabinets are very heavily painted lots of coats of paint.  It is even hard to even see the hinges there is so much paint.  What are my options.  I am very handy and have faux painted walls and  crackled several items. I can do just about anything. I just do  not know what to do with these.  I would love to just throw them away but he can't do it right now.  So where do I start.  I was thinking of antiquing or distressing them.  I think I could do that but is there an easy way to get to the hinges under all that paint.  Let me know.  I would appreciate it very much.  Thank you.  Tina

Answer
Hi Tina
Nice to hear from you.
Believe it or not, the hindges will come off.
What you must do is clean the area where the screwdriver will fit.
Could be a slot head, Phillips head or Robertson head.
No way to tell till you get the paint off one screw.
Hopefully in this case they are slot head screws as they are the easiest to free of paint.
So scrape as best you can to ID the screw head.
After that, you need a hammer and your screwdriver (whatever type), and in the case of the Phillips (star head) and Robertson (square head) you need a fine pick of some type. A nail often works.
You just tap around the filled head till its free enough of paint to get the screwdriver in place. Once the screwdriver is mostly in the hole, give the end of the screwdriver a few taps with the hammer.
With the slot head you just tap it in the screw slot with your hammer.
Some will be easy some harder but they will come off.
I would remove all hindges and hardware and soak in paint stripper to remove all paint. The stripper will not hurt the metal.
Everything will look like new.
Once the doors are off it will be easy to sand them.
Tina if you don't own a random orbit sander invest in one.
It will save countless hours of hand sanding.
You don't need a top of the line one for this job and in fact a cheapie will be fine for this ($29.00)
All you are doing is roughing up the old paint so your new finish will stick. You are not removing it.
In my opinion, I would avoid any type of faux finish in the kitchen.
Once the cabinets are properly prepped a new coat of paint will look beautiful.
If you can stand an oil based, then use Melamine paint.
If not Melamine then a good quality latex in a semi gloss.
And with the new looking hindges, your sons kitchen will look like new.
I hope he appreciates Mom LOL.
Kind Regards
Eileen