Thrifty Artsy Girl: White Glazed Cabinet Transformations: Touch Ups and Maintenance a Year Later

We all have spring fever this week in my neck of the woods. We've been spending all our spare time outdoors soaking in the warmer weather. Temperatures are soaring and the sun is shining after tornados destroyed towns and lives just miles away from us.

Hopefully that is the closest to home that a tornado will get to us in my lifetime, they were practically in our backyard! In fact there was a bunch of tornado shrapnel in our backyard and throughout our whole town, you can see some pics on my Instagram.

We'll probably always have close calls since we live in tornado alley (is that even a thing?!), the town I live in was once badly hit in the 1967 (our familes were in that one, thank God they all survived) and tornados seem to devastate year after year all around us. But I guess we all have some form of Mother Nature where we live that needs to give us a reality check every once in a while to remind us that this isn't our world, we just live in it.

Now that I've given you all the weather report I'll get down to business. A year after painting my kitchen cabinets they still look great! For the most part. They have a couple minor chips all the way down to bare honey oak. Of course I don't want that to show and I've figured out an easy way to fix these chips.

Here is a picture of the island. It gets beat on the most and surprisingly has only one small damaged/chipped corner. I painted the island green at Cory's request. Since I picked out the color for the cabinets and the walls I thought it was only fair that I give him a bit of creative license in our kitchen. You can't really see the difference too much in the picture, but I assure you it's apparent. I knew green was a bold choice and that it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but ultimately if we liked it, that's all that mattered. Plus islands that don't match the cabinets are all the rage right now so hopefully this trend is a lasting one...

To make the green I simply mixed in some green paint that was left over from the walls in with the white paint and it worked perfectly. At first I really didn't know what to think of it, but the green grew on me and now I love it. I actually prefer how the glazing looks on the island better than the cabinets. We both agree that if the island was white it would be overkill and would have overwhelmed the kitchen.

This bad boy and one small toddler (you would think we had a clumsy elephant that smashes everything in his path living here) named Jackson are the culprit for the nicks and chips.

Jackson circles around the island about 50 times a day on that motorcycle and sometimes his car. So really we have put cabinet transformations to the ultimate test and in my humble opinion a couple small chips as the result of continuously running a motorcycle and other toys onto the painted surface is pretty amazing!

Here's a picture of a small chip on the cabinet door below the kitchen sink. I'll show you all how easy it is to fix this so you can't even tell it was there!

First I grabbed my paintbrush with white paint on it out of the fridge.

Yes that's right, the fridge.

Many years ago Cory found out that you can wrap your wet paintbrushes in Saran Wrap and store them in the refrigerator and then use it again another day without the paint drying up on the brush. This genius trick has saved us countless hours (and probably paintbrushes) since we don't have to clean the brush every time we're exhausted and done painting for the day.

Since I'm currently working on another painting project with pure white cabinet transformations I already had a wet white brush in the fridge. I found out you can put the wet brushes in ziploc bags and it works just as good as Saran Wrap at keeping the brush nice. I store wet brushes sometimes for weeks at a time. Yes, I know, I'm totally lazy and sometimes the brush does get a little too dried out and caked with paint so I have to wash it before I start painting, but I have yet to ruin a brush by using this technique.

This particular brush could really use a good rinsing since I think it has been in the fridge for a couple weeks (shame on me) but for touching up nicks on cabinet doors I really only need a tiny amount of paint and honestly a "dry" brush works better for this.

Before you do anything with paint you could lightly sand the chipped area with very fine sandpaper. Maybe it's because mine are glazed, but I find that I don't need to.

After I took my brush out of the Ziploc bag I dabbed on a very slight amount of paint, so slight I used the paint that was already on the brush (really lazy of me, buy hey, it worked). What I try to do is only get paint on the gouged out area. I wiped off the paint that got on the already painted surface with my finger and that also helps to push more paint onto the chipped area I want to cover. I want the edge of the painted surface and the gouged out surface to be flush with each other so you cannot tell that it's been repaired.

I let that dry for a couple minutes then I grabbed my foam brush with glaze/stain on it from the fridge (yep, I put that in the fridge too).

I just put a dab of stain right over the fresh white paint and wiped it off almost immediately (just enough time to snap a picture) with cheesecloth.

Here's the finished product, before the protective clear coat of course. You can't even tell it's been repaired or that a chip was even there! It really is such an easy fix (made easier by having my brushes ready to go in the fridge!).

I discovered how to repair any chipped paint on the cabinets when I was initially painting them. Before the clear coat is painted on the surface is extremely delicate. You can scratch the paint off with a fingernail. I had a couple areas that I had to fix because I was apparently reckless and handled the cabinets with wild abandon or well, who knows really, but after that I handled the cabinets with kid gloves until the clear coat was dry.

As for maintenance, honestly it is the same as with unpainted cabinets. I wipe up any spills with a damp sponge. That's it, nothing special. I almost feel like painting these cabinets made them more durable because of how hard the protective clear coat dries. I really think rustoleums cabinet restorations paint has held up remarkably well for the beating they take from one small toddler. I am beyond satisfied, even though I've had to fix a couple spots of chipped paint. I recommend this paint product to anyone who is thinking of painting their cabinets.