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Hand Painted Oak Kitchen, Leeds – Blog by Lee Simone

This blog was first published on Traditional Painter

The finished kitchen
The finished kitchen

I recently hand painted this kitchen for a lovely couple in North Leeds. They wanted to update their kitchen, making it lighter, brighter and more contemporary. Instead of ripping out the units, having them replaced and going through alot of upheaval, they decided on the much easier and cheaper option of having the units painted. They contacted me by phone and I went over a couple of weeks later for a consultation.

During the visit they asked my advice on choosing the new tiles and also potential colours for the walls. I was only to happy to help and thought a subtle, slightly patinated tile would work best with the current worktop, picking out my favourite option from the sample tiles they had.

From there we moved onto the colour for the kitchen units. Something like The Little Green Co.’s ‘China Clay’ worked really well, having a lovely warm tone that complimented the chosen tile really well. We then moved onto the walls and I suggested painting them a couple of shades darker that the units but keeping them in the ‘colour group’. Something along the lines of Little Green Co.’s ‘China Clay Deep’, seemed the natural choice and would work beautifully.

After a couple of days I sent out my quote and later received a call saying they would like to book me in 🙂

The kitchen before it was painted
The kitchen before it was painted

The kitchen was originally oak and this is what it looked like prior to me starting. When I arrived, all the tiling was complete and the walls had been painted in ‘Welcome Deep’ by their decorator

Preparation –

I began, as I do all hand painted kitchen jobs, by thoroughly cleaning all the units with Krudcutter Original. After masking everything off with 120 lining paper and 3M’s Edge Lock 2080EL tape (Reviews on the 3M site), I was ready for the all important sanding stage. This gave me the opportunity to try out my latest bit of kit – the Festool RTS 400 Q-Plus GB 240V Orbital Sander. I used Festool’s 180 grit Brilliant Sanding Pads and I have to say I was very impressed with this little machine. Not only is it lightweight and easy to use, but it also has a variable speed setting and an inbuilt dust extraction feature.

The doors however did have some more detailed areas so I reluctantly put down my new toy and hand sanded using the wonderfully flexible 180 grit Abranet sanding strips. All in all the sanding stage on this kitchen was a great success – first impressions of my new sander  🙂

The opposite side of the kitchen
The opposite side of the kitchen
Festool RTS 400 Q-Plus GB 240V Orbital Sander
Festool RTS 400 Q-Plus GB 240V Orbital Sander
The prepped and primed kitchen
The prepped and primed kitchen

Priming –

As the kitchen was oak I had to avoid any ‘tannin’ issues so chose Zinsser Bin, a high adhesion shellac primer as my first coat. As i have mentioned before in other Blogs I am favouring ZinBin at the moment as it resolves the potential problem of the oak ‘tanning’, has great opacity, adheres fabulously and is dry within an hour.

After lightly sanding the Zinsser Bin to make it lovely and smooth I then applied a coat of  Otex primer by Tikkurila. This was matched to an equivalent shade of   ‘China Clay’ and is a brilliant product, lovely to use and creates a really good base for the top coats. Once primed I then filled any gaps or holes, gave it a further light sand, hoovered and was then ready for the next stage.

Top Coats –

For this project I applied two-three coats of  the oil based paint Empire by Tikkurila, which was also matched to an equivalent shade of ‘China Clay’ and posted to me by Holmans Paints. The Empire was applied using artist brushes, high density foam rollers and a Purdy Pro-Extra.

After removing the tape, tickety booing and tidying up the transformation was complete. A lovely new kitchen – lighter, brighter and more contemporary. The clients were over the moon and a pleasure to work for, all in all a lovely job well done 🙂 They later emailed me with this happy review –

“Thank you for the pictures.  We are so pleased with the light, airy feel you have created for us in the kitchen, giving new life to our units.  Your attention to detail was fantastic and we appreciated all your advice in choosing colours, tiles etc.  We were also grateful for the extremely tidy and quiet way you worke” Mrs P, Leeds

The finished kitchen
The finished kitchen
The finished kitchen
The finished kitchen
A close up of the 'brush mark free' finish
A close up of the ‘brush mark free’ finish
Close up of the 'Brush Mark Free' Finish
Close up of the ‘Brush Mark Free’ Finish
A great transformation
A great transformation