Painting kitchen cupboards with Farrow and Ball

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Comments

  • andycrichton
    andycrichton Posts: 31 Forumite
    edited 26 October 2011 at 4:02PM
    bluewater wrote: »

    It's fairly easy to get a good finish with a little practice and I think it would be difficult to get a comparable finish with brushing. It's also very quick (about 30 seconds to spray a door).

    Going back to the OP's questions, I think a lot will depend on the quality of the doors and what they are made of. If brushing then the F & B Estate eggshell is used quite a lot (according to the forums). One tip that is often repeated is to add a little Owatrol oil to the paint which improves flow and reduces brush marks

    I know that what I have done might seem a bit ambitious but it really was easy and the results are good.

    Fair play to you for going the route you went. Out of interest how many doors and drawers did you paint?

    I have sprayed and hand-painted kitchen doors and whole kitchens, and would not agree though that spraying is intrinsically better than brushing in terms of end result. They are just different approaches each with pluses and minuses.

    The best sprayers and best painters using their paint of choice will deliver the same beautiful colour kitchen but with a distinctly different look. Which is great. Not everyone likes the traditional look, not everyone likes the perfect laminate look.

    And with paint it is horses for courses. You spraying with tinted Morrells lacquer system v bad painter with F&B eggshell system, you win hands down. Good kitchen painter brush finishing with Little Greene oil eggshell, whats not to like :)


    With speed of job, it depends on what you are comparing. Doing just doors and drawers in water-based paint, you are right, spray v brush is quite speedy in terms of getting the paint on quicker, but you are still rubbing down between coats, right, to give your paint a key? So not a great deal in it, you work a bit less but cant really finish much quicker overall.

    When repainting a whole kitchen, having done the maths, its the hare and the tortoise syndrome. There isnt much between spray and brush in terms of time or effort to complete a whole kitchen - doors, drawers, frames, cornices, plinths and end panels - where you want everything to coordinate rather than look like an add-on. Spraying each coat is faster, sanding between coats takes the same time, Masking up frames is a time-consuming pain...

    If painting inside of cupboards, that is faster by spray, but for most kitchen use, that is generally not a good plan.

    Some painters take doors away to spray them (for speed, correct) and hand-paint frames cornice etc in situ (for ease of working, correct) but brushed frames and sprayed doors/drawers doesnt really work aesthetically.

    (btw F&B eggshell is water-borne ie alkyd resin in water. One theory that has come up about why F&B went this "eco" route is that alkyd resin is dirt cheap compared to acrylic resin used in tried and tested premium water-based trim paint - just saying!) Floetrol is to condition water-based paint, Owatrol is strictly for oil paint.
    It is no fun getting part way through the decorating and you don't know the next step.
  • bluewater
    bluewater Posts: 122 Forumite
    There are 16 drawer fronts including 8 1000mm deep drawers and 9 doors, plus some end panels, plinth, pelmet and cornice.

    You are right - despite spraying being quick it's preparation and cleaning up and 2 coats of primer and 3 top coats that takes a lot of time. And for most pieces you have to paint both sides. The edges I did with a brush except for the top coat.

    Overall maybe it's no quicker than a brush or roller. The sprayed finish is good though. Rightly or wrongly I got the impression that the tougher finish was only available with paints that are best sprayed.

    I think that brushing would be good with solid wood doors where you want the grain to show. With smooth mdf I was concerned that I wouldn't get a smooth finish with a brush. A roller might be ok though
  • bluewater wrote: »
    There are 16 drawer fronts including 8 1000mm deep drawers and 9 doors, plus some end panels, plinth, pelmet and cornice.

    Thats interesting. From the figures you were quoted, the cost of spraying and the cost of hand-painted are much of a muchness, although the £1400 sounds a bit spendy!

    Overall maybe it's no quicker than a brush or roller. The sprayed finish is good though. Rightly or wrongly I got the impression that the tougher finish was only available with paints that are best sprayed.

    Thats probably accurate, to be fair. But having said that there are hand-painted kitchens out there with many many years under their belt and doing well. If they have 3 or more finish coats they will last, or 1 oil undercoat and 2 oil topcoats. And you can easily do a couple of maintainence coats further down the road before the wear gets too far gone - and give your kitchen yet another lease of life.
    I think that brushing would be good with solid wood doors where you want the grain to show. With smooth mdf I was concerned that I wouldn't get a smooth finish with a brush. A roller might be ok though
    Most hand-made wooden kitchens regardless of price nowadays are poplar frames with MDF panels, so we have to get them looking nice. If you laid on paint with a dense foam roller (the black foam) and laid off with something like a Wooster Alpha brush, MDF paints up pretty nice and even.

    Loads of ways to skin an acid cat:beer:
    It is no fun getting part way through the decorating and you don't know the next step.
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