#AskFleurish Episode 8: How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets with CHALK PAINT

says relize okay, can you see me? yeah okay good morning everyone good afternoon good afternoon I guess it's 12:30 it's Tuesday this is

episode

number 8 of Ask Blossom and I don't know why it's because it's 8

episode

s to do this, but we are. we're going to do

kitchen

cabinets

, it's definitely the number one thing that people come to the store to buy our

paint

for and you know the

kitchen

is the most remodeled room in the house, absolutely the number one, the kitchen is the heart of the house for everyone. You spend a lot of time in your kitchen and many of us have very dated

cabinets

, they are probably good quality solid oak or solid maple and the space it takes up is fine, do you know why you would rip out all the cabinets in your kitchen to replace them?

It's just extremely expensive to replace all the cabinets, but then what do you do with all that after it goes to a landfill? Responsible remodeling is to refinish them if they are perfectly fine, so don't resurface them and replace them with pressed board. Keep your solid wood that's perfect for

paint

ing and I'll show you the best way to paint and prepare because

chalk

paint is definitely the best way to DIY, it's not a latex band-aid you're putting on, you're really creating a beautiful Hand painted finish that will increase the value of your home. Every dollar spent in the kitchen will be recouped if you resell it and want something that will last.

You don't want peeling paint. of their cabinets, their time and their effort, their work is the vast majority. You can renovate your average kitchen for between $200 and $400 using our product and you probably couldn't even cover a pantry door for that. It's really amazing. things here today and we're going to go ahead and get started, we're going to focus pretty heavily on most of what I'm doing today so you can really see the details of what's going on, so again, this is a splurge episode eight painting and Waxing kitchen cabinets, the first thing you want to do is prepare and the beautiful thing about using

chalk

paint is that you don't have to do a lot of preparation, but you do have to do some preparation, so we're I'm going to use basic H.

This is my favorite cleanser. Would you sell it here in the store? It is a Shaklee product. It's wonderful if you have a local Shaklee person. Definitely buy it from them; Otherwise, you can get it from us. Why do I like this? The product is because it is completely non-toxic, it is very safe to work with, it rinses very clean and leaves no residue that can fight with the paint, so I love that any other non-toxic cleaner is fine, don't use it. TSP or any other really harmful substance, this is a really kind paint, we must be environmentally safe and using it is just not necessary and in fact you could cause some harm to your body and you could leave residue that could fight with your paint, so basic non-toxic H cleaner is excellent.

This will make 48 gallons, so I have some water in this bucket. I'm going to use about a teaspoon and a half for the water I have. here so my fancy measure is to look a little bit there so the best tool you can use to clean is these little sponges here so I like the whiskey brite any brand will use. I like the rough side that's here because this This is really going to wear down anything dirty that's here. Your kitchen cabinets are probably dirtier than you think, with a lot of hidden grease and things like that, so I'm going to wash them with this side and I'm going to rinse them with this side, so here I'm going to work and I'm going to scrub cleaning all of that and you can see I'm putting in a little bit of muscle because I really want to make sure that I'm doing a good thorough job of cleaning because a clean, dry surface is going to give you the best preparation you can get for painting.

You do not need to remove the finish. You don't need to sand the cabinets. You don't need to damage them. our paint will adhere better than any primer so just wipe it off but more here they are really dirty you can see I'm really getting all that dirt out of there and I'm spending time getting into the corners and getting everything out. of that and I'm putting a little pressure here because I really want to make sure that I'm getting everything that's sunk into that finish that's there, so if any of you are thinking about painting your kitchen cabinets I'd love to know how big it is your kitchen tell me what color you're thinking tell me if you're going to tackle it with a friend or not do it yourself okay I'm going to rinse this take this side and I'm just going to take it off you can see they're very very dirty, very dirty, take them back, very dirty here, that's why it's important to rinse them, you should rinse them just like you would rinse your hands when you wash your hands if I leave some little bubbles here.

The good thing about using basic ages, those little bubbles are not going to fight with my finish and that's one of the big reasons why I really like this cleaner, so I'll wipe it off and I just want to make sure that my sponge is clean when I'm done so knowing that there's no more dirt in there looks pretty good now, so I want to make sure it dries completely if I'm cleaning my entire kitchen. I'm going to let my cabinets dry for a couple of hours before I start painting because you don't want to trap moisture in them right now, we're going to look at the paint, so I put some paint in here before and I want to show you some little tricks to paint oak.

I would say oak cabinets are probably the number one wood we hear from people coming into the store, a smoother cabinet like the one I just made, which is probably maple, which you don't have. this open vein, can you tell what that green is in the photograph? You see what it is, you see that really open grain there and if you paint the traditional way of working with the grain, can you see all those holes that are there when you work? with that you end up with all these little bags here, does that appear there and take a closer look?

All these little air pockets from the grain are there and I don't have any paint so it looks like I've missed it. a stain or I don't know how to paint the key is to really work with a good natural bristle brush to properly load the brush, you really want to make sure that all sides of the brush have paint on it, okay, you don't want to put just a little bit on it, you want all sides of your brush to have paint, you don't want it to drip. I wiped off the excess and you'll notice I'm only using about the first quarter. of my brush, which is a properly loaded brush, I don't want the paint to get all the way up here, to my metal ferrule, that's just going to rust it and get it stained with too much paint, and it's going to get slimy and make a big mess, so I just want to do with the first quarter or maybe a third of the brush, and you want to paint opposite to the grain, so I'm not going to paint with the grain and make these little stripes like this because then it's going to look weird now I'm going to have, ya you know, brush strokes that go opposite the grain and then I have the grain in this direction, instead what I want to do is work against the grain, but then I'm just going to notice how I'm pushing it in different directions.

I'm not having any particular kind of movement, I'm just trying to push the paint into that grain and very, very lightly, take the weight of my brush and just tickle that surface like that. and that will bring out my brush strokes and be very nice. You don't want your brush strokes to go in one direction because that will actually highlight any type of flaws you may have in your wood. So you'll notice that I'm working against the grain and then in any direction, no direction in particular. If you're excited about painting your cabinets, give me some highlights here.

If you're thinking about doing it, you like what we do. We're doing here in our ask and flourish videos, we'd like to hear from you so we need some thumbs up so notice I'm just letting the brush take me to the surface so there's a ton of paint right there . I leave my paint very thick and paint with the grain as I would with latex. You'll leave a lot of brush strokes here, a lot of brush strokes, and you'll use a lot more paint than you need. I don't want to apply thick paint like that and brush with the grain.

You really want to challenge that old notion when you use this product and extend that paint that much further. Look how far I can extend that paint. to pick that up and I'm going to finish painting all of this. I'm going to pick up a little bit more of that paint that's there, that's too much and I'm going to be able to finish painting the rest of this door with the The amount of paint that's there is still too much, spread it out a little bit more, so when you work with paint you can do a single coat if that's the look you like, but I recommend it on kitchen cabinets and such. that will wear a lot, you know, two or three very thin coats of paint, letting each one dry between the first coat, you know, you can let it drive for 15 minutes and you're fine, the second coat, I would let it dry for a couple of hours before you apply the third coat or overnight because you really want to make sure that it's really dry, that your paint is completely dry before you wax it and I let my last coat of paint dry overnight before I wax. to make sure it's completely dry because you don't want to trap moisture under that wax, so when I'm working on the cabinets, why do I want wax?

I like using wax for a few reasons, one is it's just a million times easier to use than a polyurethane or shellac or something like that, where I have to worry about brush strokes and drips and over brushing and all that. The other thing is that the wax gets a really beautiful finish and is really easy to maintain. so I'm going to put a coat of clear wax on it. I'm using one of these wax brushes. This is our waxing brush that we carry in the store. This is a CO2 handcrafted product. I have a couple of them here and I like that Kota Artisans brush because I like this flat finish on the brush.

So what it does is it really helps massage the wax into the paint and what I'm trying to do is fill whatever amount of paint I have here on the surface with wax, no more, no less, just the amount of paint that's here. , so I'm not using a ton of wax and just like paint, you know a couple of thin coats are better than one thick coat. It is almost impossible to get it to fill perfectly in one coat, after all we are human and contrary to popular belief, more wax or a thicker coat of wax does not equal more protection, it simply does not, dine in wax Actually it won't.

It gives you a nicer shine and a better finish and more protection than more wax, so I'm putting my wax on my wax brush. This is a good amount of wax, but I have a cloth with me. This is one of our better than cheese. cloth towels and I'm going to work on a little section and I'm going to rub the wax in here and if you think of it like putting on hand cream, I think that's the best analogy, if you do a little bit of back and forth. I can rub a little. I'm not going to spend much time on it.

I'll just do that section and then immediately wipe off the excess and notice that I'm pretty much wiping in one direction here and just removing any extra things that might be on the surface. I'm not rubbing it back and forth, that's polishing. You can do it later if you want, but it's not necessary, so when I feel the surface now it feels hydrated, it feels soft but it doesn't feel wet or sticky or sticky, it's okay, it just feels hydrated, so notice I'm also working in small sections so I'm being a little more methodical about how I put this on because I want to know where I've gone. and look, you can't tell where you start and stuff, it's wonderful, you don't have to worry about overlapping marks, you don't have to worry about knowing that you're so perfect, you just put it on and see the pressure I have.

I'm doing I'm not doing this delicate like just paint it on the surface this is not going to do anything at all but I'm not going to do this either you don't need to hurt your brush, you don't need to do it you hurt your hand it's not high pressure my bristles move the I'm pushing into the surface so it can soak into the paint that's there and if you think about it like putting on hand cream the same pressure that you would use to rub in that hand cream is what you're doing so you know I'm not doing this. with my hand cream, it wouldn't do anything if I barely touch it, but I'm not going to break my knuckles either, so the same pressure I would use there is what you want to use with your brush do you have a question yes Melissa pen says I've been afraid to do my cabinets for fear of never being able to return if trends change.

Is this technique difficult? to break up or it's like any other piece of peanut and to be able to use removers, of course, absolutely. I mean, if you wanted to repaint it, as long as you use our brand of paint, you can paint over it and change the color with whatever wax you want. You could certainly remove the wax with similar mineral spirits if you wanted and then repaint with it. Know another type of paint or you can use a stripper and take it all and go back to the absolutely stained wood, so you know that's the best thing about paint, that it never reaches the point of no return, you can alwayschange your mind and you know, go back and do something, that's why you want to work in solid wood. and not something like plastic or laminate or something like that that's not going to last, like if you're working on wood, there's no limit to how many times you can remake something so absolutely that I don't know if this is going to be shown in the video, but I'm going to try to put a little bit of wax on you here so you can see here, it doesn't look like there's a lot of wax on it.

Wax, you can't really see that now, can you see my finger? Can you see in the video how I'm making little marks there so it doesn't look like I have a lot there, but I have a lot? There's a lot of wax in there, so I really want to make sure I get that excess off on my floss, twist the cloth and wipe it again so that when I do this it doesn't leave those marks, it should feel dry. it feels soft, it feels moisturized and when I do cabinets like I said I like to go over and apply two coats of wax letting the first one dry at least an hour before putting the second one on so I'm giving it time to set. apply on the paint and dry and then my second coat said: wait at least an hour, you will get a better result, it will be a little easier to work with or you can wait overnight if you want, you can wait a few days if you are busy and you can't go back to that, that's perfectly fine too and you're going to put that second coat on the same way, now you're not putting on that second coat of wax to get a waxy buildup, no If you're doing it for extra protection, you're just doing it. to make sure you have even coverage across the entire piece and that you haven't missed any spots, so that the second coat of wax only goes where it needs to on your paint and will actually glide across the surface and spread the wax where it already It's stuffed, so think again about that hand cream analogy when you rub that hand cream on, if you have too much hand cream in there, it can.

You don't just keep rubbing it in and let it go in, it's not going to soak into your skin, you just have so much. skin there that you end up pushing it up your arm or asking a friend or someone to take some of that hand cream. you either wipe it off with a towel, you have to do something with it, it won't continue to soak in the same place, that's how your wax works, that's why we have the tower, so I'm going to dip into my wax here again. and now this time I'm going to be able to go a lot further because I can feel this sliding across the surface a lot more and I'm rubbing that rub again.

I'm going to come back and I'm going to make it. that excess wax with my cloth, wipe, that's it, you're not spending a lot of time, it's not the long, super difficult process to work with, it's just not if it takes you half an hour to hit something, you're working too hard. I'm going to wipe off that excess and give it a good tug. I'll put a little bit on it. You know again. I'm not shaking. I'm not working that hard but I'm not just playing it. I'm wiping it down, keeping it away and making sure there's nothing extra left on the surface and it feels really good, it was really very slippery again.

I'm going to clean it well. I'm going to let it dry for a little while and then I can go back and polish it so I'm going to show you on this brown paper because it's very easy to see how it absorbs into the wax so if you do swirls like this you'll be able to see how you can do it easily. all these little holes here as the wax soaks into the brown paper where you got lost. You can't really see that in the painting that easily, which is why I'm not a big fan of just doing swirls which I like. be a little more methodical and do one of these and now you'll be able to see where it's starting to absorb and fill in those areas that we had overlooked before and now this will give you that even application of wax, so when you do that second coat, even if you've missed an important point, you can go back and it will fix itself in that second layer, it will absorb and this will all be fine and even when it's done, it will be done soaking and drawing.

Alright, what if you want to do some angst? I recommend that you wax first, put a coat of clear wax here and wipe off the excess as I go so the wax brush can reach those corners. Really pretty, can you see how? You just put the wax there and remove it. I can really get it into all those edges really well and it really does the work for you by massaging it into that surface, you have the least amount of waste. When you use a brush like this because it's doing the work for you, you rub it in there and I don't have something that absorbs much.

If I wax with my cloth, my stick will absorb about 30% of my wax. A lot of wax is wasted and it's hard to tell what's absorbing the cloth and what's absorbing the paint, so using a brush definitely makes the job quicker, easier to get to those edges and corners, and creates the least amount of wax. of waste if you're working on a big project like your kitchen cabinets you're already saving a ton of money you get the right tools they make a big difference okay so I put on my first coat and then I'm going to do a little more. of distress, so I have an August and blue color underneath here and I like my sandpaper a little small, so I tear it in half and here I'm using 220 grit.

I like 220 grit or distressing. I'm going to be able to I see a little bit of my original wood underneath here and a little bit of my office in blue and here I'm going to let the boss talk to me and decide where I want to emphasize it a little bit more so I know where I am. My handle will probably wear a little more, so I'm going to go in and hit it a little harder. You can see where the wax is really starting to clog my sandpaper, which is why I like to use these little pieces all folded up. like that so I can flip it over and then when I flip it over, I can really flip it and get that color a lot quicker, work on my corner a little bit more and flip it over again, it starts to clog up so you'll notice that.

While I'm doing this, I'm going to very lightly clean up the sanding, not too much, my color looks a little weird. You know, now I can see these lighter areas in these darker areas, so that's why you want to apply your second coat. of wax after sanding because that will even out the wax application obviously the areas where my August and Blue are I don't have wax and in some of these areas I sanded a little bit of wax so when I come back you'll see boom my color has back to where it's supposed to be and I don't have any of those funky lines anymore.

I took it off, put my towel on each batch, that excess wax, the second layer of wax that you can. Look a little bit more where you're going with that because you've sanded and you can see that my wax goes a lot further into this layer because it's already almost completely absorbed into that first layer. I'm just fine-tuning that. Alright, you can see how it looks really very natural. It looks like this could really be an old piece that is worn like this and when you wax first and then sand, that gives you a much more natural look.

It is distressing to do it if you stand directly. In your painting, you're probably going to back up more than you want because it backs up very quickly and you're also going to compress the paint, which makes it harder for it to absorb the wax, so when you put that on. when you put that wax on and sand and then re-wax you'll get better results okay let it dry a little bit so here's my piece that has clear wax on it. I want to show you a little darkness. wax I'd warn you a little bit against using dark wax on your kitchen cabinets if it's something you're going to use a lot if you have small children and you cook a lot in your kitchen the clear wax you can't see where I'm starting myself you can't see we're starting to stop you know it's totally clear your dark wax is going to be a little more complicated so if you need to touch up your cabinets for some reason or redo your dark wax is going to be a little more difficult to do if you're not in a very used kitchen, you can wax absolutely the entire cabinet.

If you're in a heavily used kitchen, you'll want to keep the dark wax too, you know? Here, where you're not going to get a lot of wear and tear, so my little pro tip for dark wax is very dark, very dark. Mr. Stavis Turistic is using just a little bit of mineral spirits, so I like odorless mineral spirits. I put a little bit in my can and I'm going to put it right into my wax can because I always like my wax to be a little bit thinner so I put it in there and I'm going to stir it up, push it around.

Down there, if you can see what I'm doing, can you see what I'm doing? So I'm looking for a consistency that's like a thick pudding. It's okay, although it is a soft wax and is much softer than paste wax. The process is a little different for the dark wax, even if you use this dark brown or you use the black wax, you always want to do it over your clear because your clear is your sealing layer, that's the one you need, I love it and it gives you protection . and dark wax will just give you a patina, it doesn't change the color, it just ages a little.

Can you see that good consistency? Now it's a little looser. It is perfect. It is a very thick pudding. Can you say what? that looks like just a nice thick pudding it looks a little shiny mistake that's perfect I don't want to diminish the wax by adding too much mineral spirits in there and just turning it into a big watery mixture because the mineral spirits remove the wax if we have too much mineral spirits let's take it off this nice clear protective layer that we have, we don't want to do that, so just enough to get to this a little bit shiny, err, a little bit looser, it's absolutely perfect, perfect, perfect, so you can absolutely. if you want to use a small artist brush and you can just highlight the highlights if you just want to get to the edges a little bit and see how it paints really nicely when you have that little bit of There are mineral spirits in there so I still want to work in sections and I still have than cleaning the excess.

Your wax will never change the color of your paint. That is an error. I see that many people want to change the color. The colored wax still needs to be cleaned up, you still need to keep it thin, so if I'm just working along those edges like this and I get a little bit of wax up here and I didn't want it and I just want it down. This is great. I can go in with my clear wax and a towel because my towel is absorbent and I can take it and I can wipe off that dark wax.

Look how I got the color out and now I have this nice clean. line where I don't have dark wax here you can't do that with polish you can't do that with stain you can't do that with polyurethane so love love you can do that I'm going to remove this little excess right here again so I can really make it nice and You see how I left it in the cracks there and pulled it. I was able to pull it off that top really nice. I can certainly do it all if I want to. I'm going to do everything.

I'm going to use one of my cute little wax brushes. I really like these pointy ones to do this because again, I'm not going to massage this dark wax into my surface, that's what this guy is for. for the clear one now I just want it to slide along the surface, I want it to be very slippery and I just want to paint it, so I'm going to get to my corners and I'm going to slide along my surface like this and then I'm going to take my towel and I like to wipe it with the fiber to remove the excess, so the other thing you can do as well is if you feel like this is too much, you can certainly mix a little bit light and a little bit dark together and you can, you know, create a lighter mix so that you give it a little less patina, a little less aging, all the cover that I'm going to return and that I'm going to clean. my excess and I notice that I am twisting my towel to make sure I am removing it and that I am not dragging more in there.

I like that it can catch that little bit of grain that's in the radius and highlight that. The grain that was there was really nice, it's not that nice. If you decide it's too much, again I can take that cloth because the cloth is absorbent with a little bit of clear wax and I can go in and rinse it off. I can achieve it all if I want, but if I go over it slightly and take it down a little bit, I can get that look where it's a little aged, but my French linen color is still primary, so let's see how that can really change the look, from the outside to the inside you can get any kind of range like that so I want to show you another thing that's really awesome about wax and why I like using wax on this paint.

Now, this paint is unique because it's actually absorbing this wax, so if you use latex paint or some self-sealing paint, the wax won't do much good because it can't absorb it. This paint is designed to speak and be absorbent, which is where the name speaking paint comes from. it absorbs into that wax and gives you a much more protective layer so you can do things like I have this cabinet here that we painted and you know, crazy things happen in life, and what if your three year old decides? Draw a masterpiece on your cabinets with a Sharpie marker that is permanent if you have a factory finished cabinet and you have a varnish or polyurethane that you have used on your cabinets or you know another brand of finishing product that you put in there that has Sharpie in there. and now you're going to have to remove the finish, you're going to have to use a stripper and when you do that, you're not only going to take off the clear coat, you're going to take off the paint as well. removes the stain and whatever else is on that cabinet, so whether you've done a stain, a finishpainted, whatever varnish is stuck there, it's not going anywhere, you'll have to start over.

This is the good thing about using this wax. here's my wax on my towel again look at this look at how I'm removing the marker it's all on my towel in this cabinet the door was painted 3 or 4 weeks ago yeah look that's completely gone I just fixed that in what five seconds, five seconds, so you know that table you have at home right now, that had nail polish remover on it six years ago and that's still there with the tablecloth askew because you can't show anyone if it's already done with chalk paint, you could have fixed it. in five seconds, such incredible, incredible things, so we would love to hear from you and hear about your kitchen cabinet projects.

If you have any questions about how to make your kitchen cabinets, we are here to help. You can put your question below, whether you find this on our YouTube channel or here on Facebook, you can ask us questions below and we will answer you. The last step you may want to do with your kitchen cabinets is to polish them and I recommend polishing them. for kitchen cabinets just because when you polish the wax you actually harden it a little bit more Sheen is going to be more resistant to fingerprints and different marks like that so again I like to use a polishing brush you can absolutely use a cloth and Really I need to rub very, very, very vigorously with a cloth to get that shine.

It's hard to get to corners and things like that. That's why we want to use a wax brush, so we really like using these polishing brushes. I can come and go. from so much time getting good money I can get into my crevices I can get this beautiful shine just by rubbing my surface these are made of horsehair like the idea of ​​a shoe cleaning brush only it's designed for furniture it's soft it's not going to scratch and that's it horsehair that does a beautiful job of polishing and not scratching, so I can do that. Can you see that pretty shine there?

Now you have this beautiful professional looking finish, this high end finish and I already spent a little bit of time, a little bit of money and that's it, and you have this brand new kitchen, very good, thank you very much for looking today, I will keep an eye out for your questions and remember to post your projects too. on Instagram or Facebook and to make sure you tag flourish at home there and if you really want to make sure your theme use our hashtag paint create flourish, all put together in one word and every Monday we present a client project and give you $10 to spend in the store if we put them there, so we would love to see your projects.

Thank you very much for watching, see you next week.