Painting kitchen cupboard fronts and tiles....advice please

[jenni75]

Hi, I'm trying to do up the kitchen, can you tell me can i use a roller brush to paint kitchen tiles, never done this before and don't want to make a hash of it.
Also can you tell me how to go about painting kitchen cupboard doors, what stuff to buy, I don't want to take the doors off (cos i won't be able to get them back on)
All advice greatly appreciated, ta

I'm probably not a good person to give advice, because I just did this but did a pretty crap job (my standards are low )

First of all, are your cupboards wood or melamine?

The proper advice is to take the doors off and paint them in the garden (to reduce drips). I didn't, for various reasons, and yes I have drips. I just painted mine as they were, after masking off the handles and hinges. My doors were wood-effect melamine (nice) so I used specialist melamine primer followed by kitchen paint. I tried a roller but found I got a better finish with a brush (but wooden doors may be different).

Tiles you can spray, paint with a brush or a small roller. Again, you need specialist tile paint or at least specialist primer with a good hardwearing paint on top (the specialist paints come in a very limited range of colours). You will have to decide whether to paint over the grouting or mask that off, or fill it in afterwards with a special grouting pen.

Thanks for the advice hester - I think they are malomine, they are white and have a wooden strip on bottom.
I've got tile paint and was thinking of painting grouting and going over with a grout pen :)

OK, then you have a bit of a horrid job ahead. BUT if your cupboards and tiles are anywhere as vile as mine were, it will be well worth it.

I think you still need to sand the cupboards, to give it a bit of grip. This is hard work. When you pain on the primer, the brush tends to skid across (this is why the roller didn't work).

Let us know how you get on. Most people were horrified that I didn't just buy a new kitchen, but I can't afford it and I'm pretty happy with the end result.

Should add: it is probably obvious, but this is what I did to the cupboards: washed down with degreasing liquid, sanded, washed down with sugar soap (it's amazing how much grease you get in a kitchen), primer, 2 coats of kitchen paint. I'm actually thinking of going back for a third coat, because my original cupboards were dark, but you won't have that problem.