Golden oak from the 1980s becomes a current painted kitchen through oak cabinet painting: tannins get sealed under a shellac primer, the open grain gets filled or stays on show, and a hard sprayed enamel goes over top.
Golden oak is the most common kitchen in London. Oakridge, Westmount, Byron, White Oaks, Pond Mills and Stoneybrook were all built or renovated when it was the builder standard, and the cathedral-arch doors are still hanging. Honey maple and cherry doors hung in the 1990s and 2000s in Masonville and Hyde Park need the same tannin care in cabinet painting without the grain work. Kitchens where the oak is too good to cover belong on the cabinet refinishing page.
Tannins in oak, cherry, walnut and mahogany dissolve in water. Put a water-based primer over raw oak and the tannins rise into it, then through the topcoat, as yellow, pink or brown blotches that start at the edges of the door. On the first day the paint looks perfect, and three weeks on it looks stained.
Oak cabinet painting starts with a shellac-based primer, which is alcohol-borne and seals the tannins where they sit. Within an hour it is dry, it sands to powder, and gives the enamel a sealed, even base. It is the single step that separates an oak cabinet painting job that lasts from one that gets repainted the next year.
Oak has an open grain that paint alone does not hide. Filled, the door reads as smooth painted wood, like a new MDF shaker door. Left open, the grain shows through the paint as a fine texture, which some owners prefer because it still looks like wood.
To fill it, a water-based filler is squeegeed into the pores in a couple of passes, left to dry overnight, then sanded level before priming, which puts an extra day on the schedule and an extra line on the quote. Skipping the fill skips that day. Either route is proper cabinet painting, and because the sample door gets sprayed each way, the decision happens in the kitchen rather than from a description.
The arched cathedral doors of a 1980s oak kitchen have a raised centre panel that floats in a frame. In a London house, indoor humidity swings from about twenty percent in furnace season to sixty in July, and the panel shrinks and swells with it. A thin line can open in the paint at the panel edge in February and close again in summer. That is wood moving, not paint failing, and a flexible waterborne enamel or two-part polyurethane handles it better than a brittle lacquer. The quote and the care sheet both say so before the work starts.
Maple has a tight grain and paints cleanly with no fill, which makes a 1990s honey maple kitchen the easiest cabinet painting job in the city. Cherry paints as cleanly as maple but bleeds tannin like oak, so it gets the shellac primer. Either species goes to the booth with the same thin sprayed coats and the same sanding between them, and the colour decision is the same one covered in cabinet colour consultation.
A golden oak kitchen is the job we see most, and the sample door shows the grain filled and unfilled before anything is decided. Book the visit or call +1 (226) 271-3465. The London Cabinet Painting home page covers the rest of what oak cabinet painting sits beside, from islands to vanities.
Whatever the cabinet, vanity, pantry, island or built-in, the prep, primer and sprayed enamel match what the kitchen received.
Kitchen cabinet painting keeps the kitchen you have: doors, drawer fronts and boxes are each prepped to suit their material, then sprayed with a hard enamel in a fresh colour, for far less than replacing anything.
See Kitchen Cabinets
A spray gun lays hard enamel onto cabinet doors in thin, even passes that a brush cannot match, leaving a factory-smooth surface with no ridges, stroke marks or drips where grease can gather or chips can start.
See Spray Painting
Refinishing suits cabinets built from wood too good to hide. Stripping or sanding removes the tired old finish, a new stain goes on if a different colour is wanted, and a hard clear coat locks the grain in.
See Refinishing
Slick factory surfaces such as thermofoil, melamine and laminate shed ordinary paint, so this kind of cabinet painting starts with an adhesion primer that grips them, followed by a sprayed enamel topcoat that holds for years.
See Thermofoil and Melamine
Refacing hangs brand-new doors and drawer fronts on cabinet boxes still worth keeping, or replaces a lone damaged door, after which every piece is sprayed at once so the whole kitchen reads as one matched set.
See Refacing and New Doors
A two-tone kitchen sets a light painted perimeter against an island done in stained wood, charcoal, green or navy, and the island can be done as part of the whole kitchen or sprayed by itself as its own small job.
See Two-Tone and Islands
Condo kitchen cabinet painting suits a galley with somewhere between ten and fifteen doors, respects the building's rules on hours, elevators and parking, and sends the doors away to the booth so the suite remains livable while the work is done.
See Condo Kitchens
Painting a bathroom vanity takes a day or two: its doors, drawer fronts and box get the full kitchen prep and a sprayed enamel that tolerates steam, at a fraction of a kitchen's size and price.
See Bathroom Vanities
Rental property cabinet painting gives landlords a durable, sprayed, wipe-clean kitchen finish between tenants, priced per unit and scheduled around move-out dates, with hardware and hinge fixes done at the same visit.
See Rental Properties
Tall pantries, laundry and mudroom cabinets, wall units, bookcases and fireplace mantels are built into the house, so instead of going to a booth they get sprayed in position behind sealed plastic, using the same hard enamel a kitchen gets.
See Pantries and Built-Ins
Hardware and hinge work rides along with a painted kitchen: abandoned handle holes get filled and sanded smooth, a drilling template places the new ones, soft-close hinges replace the tired originals, and the metal finish is picked to suit the colour.
See Hardware and Hinges
Colour and sheen get settled before any cabinet painting begins, on full-size sample doors sprayed in the actual product and left standing in the actual kitchen, with the colour matched from whichever paint deck the owner prefers.
See Colour ConsultationSomeone comes out, counts doors, checks the material and writes up the quote. There is no fee for the visit and nothing to sign.
Give us whatever you know about the kitchen, and a call comes back to arrange a time. A name plus a phone number gets the form through. To skip the form and talk it over, call +1 (226) 271-3465.
