When leaving the doors on makes sense

Painting your kitchen cabinets in place is one of the great money-saving DIY jobs, and it is perfectly achievable for a beginner. The big advantage of leaving the doors on is that you skip the fiddly business of unscrewing hinges, labelling doors, storing them flat somewhere out of the way, and then getting them all back on straight. For a typical run of eight or ten doors, that alone can save you a full weekend.

The trade-off is that you have to work more carefully. You cannot lay a door flat on trestles, so you need to paint around hinges and handle holes without smearing the frame. It is also slower, because you can only paint one face of each door at a time.

This approach suits solid, shaker-style doors in reasonable condition, and it is ideal if your cabinets are sound but simply dated or scuffed. It is less suitable if the doors are warped, the frames swollen, or you are after a flawless sprayed finish. In those cases, take the doors off and do it properly.

Gather your kit before you start

Kitchens are awkward spaces to work in, so get everything together first and clear the worktops. You will need:

• Sugar soap, two buckets of warm water, and plenty of lint-free cloths
• P120 and P240 sandpaper, plus a sanding block and sponge pads for moulded edges
• Fine-surface filler and a flexible filling knife
• A shellac-based primer or a dedicated adhesion primer
• Water-based satin or eggshell paint made for cabinets — about one litre per eight doors
• A 40–50mm angled sash brush, a small 25mm brush for edges, and foam mini rollers
• Low-tack painter's tape, dust sheets, a paint tray, and rubber gloves

Buy decent brushes. Cheap bristles shed hairs into wet paint, and you will spend longer picking them out than you saved on the brush.

Preparation is nine-tenths of the job

Kitchen grease is invisible and it will ruin your finish. Wash every surface you intend to paint with a sugar soap solution, then rinse with clean warm water and let it dry. Pay particular attention to the top edge of doors, around handles, and anything within a metre of the hob.

Next, remove all handles and knobs and put the screws in a jar so they do not vanish. Mask the hinges with tape rather than trying to paint around them, and run a strip of low-tack tape along the inside edge of the carcass so your brush does not slop paint onto the frame.

Then key the surface. Sand lightly with P120, followed by P240, working along the grain on timber doors. You are not trying to strip the old finish, just to dull it so the primer can grip. Fill any dents, chips or redundant screw holes with fine-surface filler, leave it to set, and sand it flush. Wipe away all dust with a damp cloth and allow everything to dry completely.

Choose the right primer

Primer is not optional, and it is where most beginners come unstuck. A shellac-based primer is the safest all-round choice: it grips hard, dries in around 45 minutes, and blocks any old grease, staining or dark colour that would otherwise bleed through your lovely new paint. If your doors are melamine, laminate or factory-finished, look for a primer specifically described as an adhesion primer.

Apply it thinly with a brush, working it into corners and mouldings. Resist the urge to lay it on thick — a heavy coat will run, sag and take days to dry. One thin coat is usually enough, though a second helps on much-handled areas. Once dry, give it a light rub with P240 to knock back any brush texture, then dust off.

Apply thin coats and work in the right order

Thin coats are the whole secret. Two or three thin coats will always beat one thick one, both in appearance and durability. Use a mini foam roller on flat panels and a brush for frames, edges and any mouldings, then lay off the roller marks with a light brush stroke in one direction.

Work in this order: carcass frames first, then the door edges and around the hinges, and the door faces last. That way you finish on the surface everyone sees, and any stray touches are cleaned up as you go.

Leave the recommended drying time between coats — usually four to six hours for a water-based cabinet paint, longer in a cold or damp kitchen. Lightly sand between coats with P240 if the surface feels rough, and wipe off the dust.

Drying, curing and the final refit

A water-based paint may be touch-dry in an hour, but it is not cured for around five to seven days. During that time it is soft and easily marked. Keep the kitchen ventilated, avoid steam baths from long cooking sessions, and open and close the doors gently.

A useful trick while the paint dries is to wedge a matchstick in the top corner of each door so it stays slightly ajar and does not stick to the frame. Remove the tape before the paint is fully hard, pulling it back on itself at a low angle for a crisp edge.

Refit handles after a day or two, tightening the screws gently so you do not crack the fresh paint. Then step back and enjoy it. The transformation is remarkable for the cost of a tin of paint and a couple of weekends, and nobody will guess the doors never came off.