For about as long as I have been nagging my husband to let me paint our kitchen cabinets, I have been researching everything there is to know about painting kitchen cabinets (read: pinning copious images on Pinterest. Seriously, what did I do before Pinterest?)

There are a ton of options, and tons of opinions and supporters for each option.

Lisa painted her kitchen cabinets with Rust-Oleum Transformation three summers ago. She enjoyed the finished product, but she said it took some time, which is not always something I have ample amounts of with two young whippersnappers running around the house.

Liz the of naptimedecorator.net did the real deal and primed and painted. Her kitchen is as dear as can be.

And Sherry and John broke down their 15 day kitchen cabinet painting project (15 days!?!). Their results are awesome; their kitchen turned out gorg. If I had the time/patience, I might have considered that route, but I didn’t.

Instead,after reading about satin and flat finishes, cabinet coat, poly, wax, etc, I chose to go with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, and here is why.

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint is awesome because there is virtually no prep work involved (aside from a good old scrubbing of your cabinets). This means no sanding and no priming, which was a huge selling point for me.

The paint itself is a little pricey, but it really goes a long way!

Painting was a breeze because of this paint and Lisa. Somehow Lisa agreed to help me (thanks, Liser!). With Lisa’s help, she and I managed to paint all the cabinets in less than 6 hours, which I think it pretty stellar. Now, before you run out to your nearest ASCP retailer, please keep in mind that I was not finished because I still needed to wax the cabinets (more on that later). 

Here are some before shots of my very ugly kitchen cabinets. Can you understand my constant desire to paint these suckers?

Horrible right?

Lisa and I made the executive decision to leave the doors on the cabinets and paint the hinges. Now, I know most of you must shake your heads at me, but I wanted to see what it looked like, and if I hated it, I figured I could just put new hinges on later.

Here are some during shots…

This was just after the first coat of paint. I was getting a little nervous, but Lisa was quite the ray of sunshine. We pushed on.

I wanted to have a two-toned kitchen. Grey base cabinets and White uppers. This is after the first coat. Lisa and I both said this finish would be good for a beach cottage’s kitchen.

Here is what the cabinets looked like after two coats of paint. Excuse the mess; this isn’t the big reveal. Vast improvement, right?

Now, I loved the two-toned look, but when Ethan came home, he wasn’t too keen on it. Now, after some soul-searching and texting with Lisa, my mom, Rona, Katie K, Bailey, and Carrie, I decided to be a good wife, and change the upper cabinets to match the base cabinets. I figured he was kind enough to put up with my nagging, etc. that I should listen to his opinion. That’s love, people!

Stay tuned for my next post, where I talk about waxing (my cabinets, silly) and revealing updates on the kitchen.

In the meantime, weigh in with whether you liked the two-toned kitchen or agree with my husband.

P.S. Are you ready to take the ASCP plunge? Check out The Purple Painted Lady–her site is informative, and she is super helpful