[judibean]

Hi,
I'm planning to redo my kitchen with the Ramsjo white cabs. I'm not entirely happy with the pink undertone, so I've been researching ways to paint it, both in this forum and elsewhere. I know people have used oil-based alkyd paint with a roller or sprayer. A thin layer of milk or chalk paint sounds more appealing to me, especially since I'm going for a less-than-perfect country kitchen look. I would then follow up with some Johnson furniture wax to buff the fronts to a low sheen. Has anyone done this and wouldn't mind sharing their experience and the results? I'm thinking of going with a pure white to hide the pink.

[Harpy]

Honestly, while I think it would look fab at first, I'd never paint kitchen cabinets with chalk paint unless I planned to make this an annual event. It's one thing to paint a side table that you aren't going to be grabbing all the time, but personally I'd either have the cabinets repainted in the hardest finish I could find or learn to embrace the pink.

[judibean]

Call me crazy but I went ahead and painted a Ramsjo door with DIY chalk paint. The reason why I'm thinking this route may work best for me is because I don't want the baked-in paint look - that is what I'll get if I order custom doors painted white from online door companies. FYI - the Conestoga doors are like this - plastic to the touch over solid wood. I haven't gotten a sample from Scherr's but would think that they would apply white paint in the same way. Probably a very durable finish, but not what I'm looking for in aesthetics.

Anyway, I used a 4" dense foam roller and applied two thin coats. I did a test on the front - I sanded a third of the door, left the middle un-sanded, and didn't touch the remaining third. The paint went on smoothly on both the sanded and un-sanded side and as you can see in the pic , (under incandescent kitchen lighting) you can't tell any difference in texture or color. In contrast, what you can clearly see is that the untouched third is suddenly more pink in comparison.



My next step is to experiment with the topcoat - obviously I need something to protect from chipping, grease, and water - on the white part, I'll do half in wax (buffed to a very low sheen) and half in polyacrylic (in matte finish). I'll update tomorrow with the results using wax (need to find the matte polyacrylic somewhere local - much harder than I would've thought!).

Again, if anyone has already pioneered this type of experiment on Ikea doors, please share! I can't be the first!

	DIY defininition DIY means Do It Yourself

	FYI definition FYI means For Your Information

	PIC PIC = Partner In Crime

[Susan]

Nice! Keep posting pics as your project progresses!

Susan

[judibean]

As I discovered, waxing is not the way to go, especially over bright white paint (see top left portion of the door). This is after 2 coats of Johnson Wax, buffed to a low sheen.



Notice the darkening effect? Not acceptable. When I bring the door down to base cab level where there is less light, the darkened effect is more pronounced - it starts looking much warmer like the original Ramsjo color.

I'm rethinking this whole painting idea. I did some more research on the water-based polyacrylic top coat - seems like you run the risk of yellowing over white paint even though it's water-based.

Hope this lesson has been helpful to some people who were curious about going this route. I'm going to research some more door companies that might offer painted white fronts with less sheen on them.