DIY Laminate Cabinet Makeover - themartinnest.com

Transform your old laminate cabinets into a shaker style door using plywood and paint |ORC Week 4

Painting anything laminate can be an intimidating process, but with the right prep work, paint, and a little patience you can transform builder basic laminate cabinets into something as dreamy as this DIY laminate cabinet makeover!

Laminate cabinets are significantly less expensive than wood but very durable. However, they can be kind of basic and boring. This particular set was still in good condition, so I thought they would be great for all of the random paint cans that I’ve accumulated.

I’ll be showing you how I took these basic laminate cabinets and gave them an updated shaker style look with this DIY laminate cabinet makeover.

One Room Challenge

It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge! If you’ve been here long you know that I love a good budget-friendly makeover, and finding ways to reuse and repurpose what you already have on hand.

Check out what all of the other guest and featured participants are up to over on the One Room Challenge Blog.

You can catch up with these 2 x 4 storage shelves from Week Two.

And see how I added hanging garage storage in Week Three as well!

***Big thanks to Walmart for sponsoring this post! I have been monetarily compensated for my work, but all thoughts and opinions are my own. We only share what we love here, and as always, thank you for your support!***

Clean & Prep

The first step was to give them a good cleaning. These had collected a good amount of dust from being out in the garage, so I used a leaf blower to blow off any residual dust and then cleaned with an all purpose cleaner and a microfiber cloth for a good wipe down.

Next, I used my orbital sander with 100 grit paper to rough up the surface. You don’t need to sand off much, just enough to remove any shine or finish. This puts enough texture on the surface to allow the paint to stick.

Then I used TSP to do one more cleaning of all the surfaces. I used the powder that you mix into water, but this TSP Spray Substitute is another easy option that I used to prep my floor tile for paint, and my master bathroom vanity too!

One more final wash with plain water and a microfiber cloth ensured that the surfaces was completely dust free.

Be careful not to overly saturate laminate as the core material is likely particle board which swells when wet.

DIY Shaker Style Trim

I wanted a more modern look for these laminate cabinets so I created a shaker style look using leftover quarter-inch plywood (tutorial coming soon).

Paint

There’s a variety of ways you can do this, but I was simply trying to use what I had on hand.

I painted the surface with one coat of all-purpose primer, then used DecoArt Curb Appeal exterior paint. In retrospect, this particular low to no prep paint likely didn’t need all of the previous prep work. But it’s a good process to follow if you’re planning to use regular latex paint.

Two thin coats of paint later every other laminate cabinet out there was green with envy.

But because I wanted this cabinet to be “extra” extra a made these DIY drawer pulls using some copper tee pulls from the plumbing section and some wood dowel rods (tutorial soon).