Painting the kitchen cabinets - highs and lows

I had no idea that painting one's kitchen cabinets would be such an emotional roller coaster. It's hard to know where to start, so I'll just go in chronological order. [This might become less coherent as the post progresses, because I'm chugging wine like a sorority girl.]

I finally got an actual coat of paint on the lower cabinet boxes! I was profoundly nervous: even though I've worked with Benjamin Moore Advance paint before, I'd only sprayed it with my Graco X5 Paint Sprayer [foreshadowing]. I'd never applied it with a brush or roller, and I'd read horror stories on other blogs about it sagging and dripping.

I mentally debated Sherwin Williams Pro Classic Alkyd vs. Benjamin Moore Advance for weeks, and finally ended up going with Advance because of one lousy review a supposed pro-painter left on the Sherwin Williams website about Pro Classic. (Kind of arbitrary when you consider you can find a ton of negative reviews on Advance, see paragraph immediately above.) It really does apply level beautifully; I'm totally sold on it now. I can see how sagging or dripping might happen if you were loading the brush and slopping it on the surface, but it was easily managed. [Forewarned is forearmed? Is forearmed a thing? That doesn't seem right. The wine might be kicking in.]

I started off with a mohair roller the guy at the Benjamin Moore paint store recommended, but ultimately went back to my Home Depot foam roller. All you need to know the mohair roller is the HAIR part. I kept seeing little fibers in the paint. Pissed me off. Luckily on my last/most recent trip to Home Depot I bought a metric butt-ton of those, in a rare demonstration of proactive purchasing. I'm ready.

That was the first high, immediately followed by relief that I like the color. [You might recall that the paint dude tried valiantly to match it to Galveston Gray after I had a dyslexic moment.] It's a warm gray and I think it will look great with White Dove on the top cabinets.

My first low was encountered when I attempted to use the spray cans I purchased from the BM paint store. I anticipated using them on the larger flat surfaces, as well as the detail-heavy side of the cabinets next to the dining area. [Someday I plan to demolish that side entirely and create bench seating, but for now I've got to address it.] None of them worked. It was bizarre: I saw the guy fill them, and I saw him test them. I shook them for nearly 3 minutes each, and tried 4 separate cans, but no love: it just oozed a clear or white-ish fluid. I had to drive back to the store, where they also tested it and verified I wasn't an idiot, and gave me my money back. While it's nice having $140 back in my pocket (10 cans at $12/can), I expected to save time with those, so it does come at a cost.

Backstory for low #2: Gettysburg Gray, my accidental choice, is a very green gray:

(Heavy on the green, light on the gray. This swatch image doesn't do it justice.)

As mentioned numerous times, the paint store dude did his level-best to get it as close to Galveston Gray as possible:

 

Unfortunately you can't take color out, you can only add or offset. So...Leo (Ryan's 8 year old) walks into the kitchen after I've finished. The first words out of his mouth? "That looks like a gross green gray."

Needless to say, I beat him to death with a paint brush. KIDDING. I ignored him, because I like the *#($%@! color. [Emphasis on the $ part of that expletive.]

Earlier in the day I had gotten primer coats 1 and 2 on the upper cabinet doors out in the garage. Since they'd had time to dry while we ate New Year's dinner, I went out and did the finish sanding (you know, 220 grit) on both the doors and the drawers, vacuumed them, and then wiped them down with Tack Cloth.

I moved the drawers inside because my hopes of spray painting them had been dashed, but I still had my Graco X5 sprayer and was Hell-bent on getting one coat of White Dove on the uppers tonight.

And that's where the wheels completely fell off.

That GD sprayer caused me profound anxiety when I was spraying the baseboards back in February, but I felt like we needed a fresh start and went into this with a positive attitude.

I hate that effing thing. It now lives in the trash.

I read and re-read the instructions, flushed then primed the tubing with paint. When I turned it to SPRAY, it spurted paint up in the air at a significant trajectory. [I will have to re-sand some of the bottom cabinet doors, dammit. They were in a box in the corner of the garage and yeah, it went that far.] I then re-checked the instructions, realized the Quick Start Guide left out a pretty critical step [bastards], and tried to spray again.

Paint then started oozing out of a connection on the hose that I didn't even touch! Ryan came out while I was in the throes of oozing paint cleanup. He tried to help me tighten the connections, but it only got messier and leaky-er. He stepped in a big puddle of paint, and he doesn't own painting shoes like I do so that was not cool.

Then the damn cat ran into the garage because he's an opportunistic jerk. I was terrified I'd be cleaning up paint cat paw prints for the rest of our lives so, I proceeded to curse a blue streak and chase him. [FYI that never, ever helps.]

I finally realized that if I didn't clean up the giant puddles of paint he'd inevitably run through them, so I abandoned chasing him in favor of cleaning.

Ryan collected Ollie and beat him on my behalf, and I cleaned paint off the garage floor as much as I could. Then I put the Graco X5 in the trash. I will hand paint/foam roll coat 1 the backs of the doors tomorrow.

[Look, we didn't beat the damn cat. He's just picking up on my stress and the boys being hyper and Ryan's mom being here. He's quite the empath. But I still hated him a little in that moment.]

So I'm slightly behind schedule. HAHAHAHAHA!

I'm way behind schedule. Whatever. It'll get done when it gets done. And it will be awesome in spite of everything.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!