can I paint laminate kitchen units without them looking rubbish?

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We will soon be moving into our new house - hurrah!

No money left over for expensive work, and I am not keen on the laminate kitchen units. I have painted kitchen units in the past, but the finish wasnt good and despite being careful there were visible brush strokes and drips.

Does anyone have any tips on how to make it look more professional, without having to actually get a professional in?

You can't but you can have them resprayed at a car body shop reasonably cheaply and they'll look fantastic.

Thanks lala - I would never have thought of that.

Go on to the Channel 4 website to the house/diy section and find the bit with that George architect bloke from the telly (sorry haven't time to find link!) . There are a couple of web articles on video on line and you see him take his doors to this place called Paintworks Ltd - I think it's in London somewhere (google it) and they do a re-spray of old doors. In the video he has his sprayed a plum colour.

I'm thinking of doing this for our utility which is the one thing we can't afford to re-do in our build but I could probably run to some re-spraying. I did wonder whether the car re-spraing people might get a bit hacked off with all these diy renovators turning up with a pile of kitchen doors to re-spray !! but the place he suggests is a specialist door respraying company. No idea of cost....

Agree get them sprayed for a decent finish.I have found local car sprayers are v friendly and like doing this!

I wonder if my local ones would like to mine ?? I really don't want to schlep all the way to London.

You can buy paint that is especially for use on kitchen cupboards.

Did you use non drip gloss in the past? No professional decorator uses non drip paints precisely because they show the brush marks.

I painted the built in cupboards in our en suite with eggshell finish paint and you can't see the brush marks at all.

Another option would be to change just the doors - this can be surprisingly cheap, especially if you manage to get the new doors on sale.