Hand Painted Kitchens for DIY Enthusiasts

As a proud member of Traditional Painter, Adam Bermingham of My Hand Painted Furniture is more than happy to help with advice and guidance about hand painted kitchens for DIY enthusiasts. Last week he received this e-mail from Des about Hand Painted Kitchens…

Hi Adam, I understand you cover Ireland for Traditional Painter, so thank you for this service you offer. I live in Ireland,I have always been a keen DIY at painting & decorating and always painted friends and family houses over the years. I am recently over here, I moved from the UK, and I am getting more and more people asking me to paint their houses, including kitchen cupboards etc. I know deep down I can improve if I were to invest in better foam rollers and brushes etc and maybe there are better oil based paints I should be using for the Kitchen cupboards.

I use Dulux Satincoat stained to the colour of choice. Is there a difference in quality between the Dulux Trade Satincoat and the standard Dulux Satincoat? Would the likes of the Little Greene Paints make much of a difference to the end job? I always add some Owatrol to the paints. If there is any other advice you are willing to offer please do, I would be grateful.

Kind Regards

Des ********

P.S. I forgot to ask is there a paint storage box you can recommend to save cleaning brushes all the time thanks.

Firstly, it’s a pleasure to help. At Traditional Painter, we aim to be a source of knowledge and experience, as well as advertising our skills and plying our trade in our chosen area of the UK.

Brushes for Hand Painted Kitchens

At My Hand Painted Furniture we use only the best brushes available on the market. For a comprehensive overview of what we believe to be the best brushes available at the moment in a variety of materials please read this recent blog post, Paint Brush Cleaning & Selection at My Hand Painted Furniture.

For priming we use Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 primer on sanded wooden surfaces and Zinsser Coverstain on problem surfaces like laminate. We use * Proform Picasso brushes in both of these products. They have great pick-up and release for speed and produce an excellent finish.

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For oil based topcoats always use a trade quality paint for kitchen cupboards because they are more durable, it is vital for hand painted kitchens. Little Greene Paints are not widely available locally, but many Traditional painters use them and will testify to its quality. Have a read of this blog post…

All our topcoats are applied with Wooster brushes. For the past few years I’ve been using the Alpha, but recently I’ve been using the new * Wooster FTP and have been very impressed.

I’m not really one for foam rollers as a rule, but many of the Traditional Painters recommend Fat Hog black foam rollers (and recent finds from Axus – the Lime roller sleeves look set to take off as well.) They are available *here.

Yes, Owatrol is always recommended for its performance and the noticeable improvement it makes to the finish.

What you are looking for is a Brush Mate to keep your brushes in. It suspends your brushes in vapor for up to 3 months, saving time cleaning and keeping your brushes in perfect condition

A couple of things I would recommend to you are * Krudkutter Cleaner/Degreaser for cleaning a kitchen prior to re-finishing and Frog Tape. It’s the best masking tape I have ever used and won’t step foot on a job without it.

I hope this post will be of help to you in the future Des, and all of my other readers with their own hand painted kitchens. If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Happy Painting

Krudkutter has since been discontinued but you can be very confident in the abilities of Fluxaf Pro Clean. The details are here.

Specialist painter and decorator, Adam Bermingham, is a member of the Traditional Painter UK network. He is the first port of call for hand painted furniture and kitchens Ireland.

Joseph & Son is Adam & Tom Bermingham, a father & son team with diverse backgrounds covering specialist painting and decorating, antiques and interior design.

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