Review of Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations

Dear Reader,

Well, we did it. Sort of. Over the course of a week, my husband and I removed kitchen cabinet doors and spread them over tables and tarp in our kids' basement play room. We scrubbed years of grease and grime off. We patched up holes and sanded plastic wood filler. We painted. Coat one. Two. Three!? And then we brushed on the protective layer.

What a helluva lot of work for two amateurs!

Our kids were thankfully at their Grandparents' home three hours away. But we had less than a week to get much done. There are still parts of our kitchen that need painting. But we accomplished our main goal: resurface cabinet doors, drawers and visible frames.

The product we used was Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations in the colour Quilters White. Here is my quick review of the product.

Pros
  1. The kit comes with all the main products you will need in one box. You receive a deglosser, scrub pads, paint stir sticks, bond coat, decorative glaze, and protective coat. In addition, the customer receives an instructional DVD explaining how to refinish your own kitchen cabinets. For non-handy people like my husband and I, this was very helpful.
  2. Other than sanding down parts that were patched with plastic wood filler, this product allows you to paint your cabinets without sanding or stripped the previous finish. This was the main reason we selected Rust-Oleum over the traditional sand, prime, paint method.
  3. The colour Quilters White was quite close to the sample on the brochures and kit. We were aiming for an ivory/creamy white colour, and that is what we received.
Cons
  1. The whole refinishing process takes much longer than expected. We had to give our cabinet door fronts a third coat since the brown wood grain was showing through after the required two coats of bond paint. Since we were short on time, our frames didn't receive a third coat. Thus, the overall finish isn't as clean and crisp as we would like.
  2. Rust-Oleum doesn't sell kit contents individually. We only wanted to use the bond coat and protective coat. We didn't desire to glaze our cabinets. But the glaze comes as part of the kit. Therefore, you end up paying for stuff you may not even want.
  3. Applying the protective coat, while easy to brush on, was a more challenging step to accomplish. Since it is clear, any fuzz or lint in the room that settles on it just drys on, in spite of all the precautions we employed to keep the dust to a minimum.
Overall, we are pleased with the results, even though it is far from perfect. But I hope it lasts for some time and doesn't start chipping in a year. Why? Because I doubt that my husband and I would be willing to put this much time and energy into restoring old, worn cabinets again. While the paint has certainly refreshed the look of our kitchen, it doesn't eliminate the fact that the wood in some places is definitely deteriorating. In a decade or so, we may have to face the reality of completely overhauling our cabinet boxes and fronts.

Yet, it does give me some peace to know that we did this D.I.Y. renovation without taking on more debt. I trust that when the time comes for us to gut and rebuild, we'll have money saved up for such an undertaking. In the meanwhile, I'll choose to be content with what I've got.

Curious as to how it looks? Sorry! You gotta wait, as our doors are still not attached!

Sincerely,
A quasi-handy Rain

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